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A comment on Show HN: Flux, a tiny protocol that rethinks email from the ground up. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Flux, a tiny protocol that rethinks email from t... by spamsch on Sunday March 08, 2026 @04:53PM (#47301332)
The biggest issue I have with this is the path to success. There are billions of emails exchanged every day. Thousands of mail servers, millions of mail clients.

This project looks great but how does it get adopted? It will need to support interoperability. It will need to support being a part of the current ecosystem and grow step by step.

So how will that work? How can I set it up and still send an email to a Google Mail account? How can my FLUX server receive emails from Exchange?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Flux, a tiny protocol that rethinks email from t... by wokki20 on Monday March 09, 2026 @02:26AM (#47305453)
This is the right question and I won't pretend it's solved yet. Interoperability with SMTP isn't built in currently.

The realistic path is a bidirectional SMTP bridge: your FLUX server accepts inbound SMTP from Exchange, Gmail, etc. and converts it to a FLUX envelope on arrival. Outbound works the other way, FLUX messages destined for a non-FLUX address get handed off to an SMTP relay. You'd get the security and features of FLUX within the network, and graceful degradation to regular email outside of it.

That's on the roadmap but not built yet. You're right that without it, adoption is a chicken-and-egg problem. Nobody migrates to a protocol they can't use to reach the people they already email.

[ Parent | on HN ]