You're right about the transition. Bridges aren't failure, they're scaffolding. Strike is literally a bridge to Lightning and nobody calls that defeat. Your utility company won't switch because Nostr exists. They'll switch when enough customers are already there and it's cheaper than maintaining SMTP servers from 1982.

O don't think it will be that hard to write a bridge

Just don’t try to sell that bridge.

It certainly wouldn't be as hard as getting the level of adoption required to not need one. I probably wouldn't want that as things are today. I was more day dreaming of a future where things like email are even more portable and decentralized. Using a custom domain helps, but it doesn't feel as incredible as the npub/nsec.

Nice.

me either. there is an encoding and authenticity problem to solve though. do you wrap the pgp stuff inside the nostr event, or do you put the nostr event inside the email, the problem with the second option is the clients can't parse it, ugly json stringified text. first option is crap because of all those headers and the requirement for a second cryptographic authenticity and potentially encryption. the bridge can't really be "trust me bro" and wrapping two distinct formats into each other means the transformation needs to be deterministic and bidirectional.

The encoding problem is real. PGP inside Nostr events is redundant crypto since Nostr already handles signing. Nostr inside email is a hack no mail client renders cleanly. Best path is a relay that speaks SMTP inbound and converts to NIP-17 DMs. Deterministic, one direction. Let legacy email push into Nostr, not the reverse. The bridge dies when the thing it bridges to stops mattering.