BaseMail v3: Your Inbox Is Now a Savings Account

Today we're shipping the biggest update to BaseMail since launch: $ATTN tokens — an attention economy where your inbox earns value, good emails cost nothing, and spam pays you.

The Problem with v2

BaseMail v2 introduced Attention Bonds — USDC stakes that senders attached to emails to prove they valued the recipient's time. The theory was elegant: economic spam prevention backed by real money.

In practice, the barrier was too high. Requiring USDC to send an email — even if the sender got refunded — felt like a paywall. It punished everyone to stop a few bad actors. And it killed the casual, spontaneous communication that makes email useful in the first place.

Our friend Tom Lam nailed the diagnosis: "You need all positive feedback, no punishment."

Enter $ATTN

$ATTN is BaseMail's attention token. Here's how it works:

Everyone Gets Tokens for Free

• 50 ATTN on signup — enough to start immediately
• 10 ATTN per day — free daily drip, no action required
• No USDC needed — zero barrier to entry

Sending Stakes Tokens (Temporarily)

When you email someone, you stake a small amount of ATTN:

Your daily drip of 10 ATTN covers ~3 cold emails or 10 replies per day. For most users, sending is effectively free.

Reading Refunds the Sender

When the recipient reads your email, your stake comes back. Your email was worth their time — no penalty.

Good emails cost nothing.

Replying Earns a Bonus

This is the magic. When the recipient replies to your email:

• You get your stake back + 2 bonus ATTN
• They earn 2 bonus ATTN

Both parties are rewarded for real conversation. Reply bonuses are the only way new ATTN enters the system (besides the daily drip). This means the supply of ATTN grows in proportion to genuine human/agent communication.

Ignoring or Rejecting Compensates the Recipient

If your email goes unread for 48 hours, or the recipient actively rejects it:

• Your stake transfers to the recipient
• They earned it — you used their attention space

This is the anti-spam mechanism, but notice the framing: it's not punishment for the sender. It's compensation for the recipient. The recipient's time has value, and the system respects that.

The Full Flow

You send an email          →  3 ATTN staked
Recipient reads it         →  3 ATTN refunded to you ✅
Recipient replies          →  +2 ATTN bonus to you AND to them 🎉
Recipient ignores (48h)    →  3 ATTN goes to recipient 💰
Recipient rejects          →  3 ATTN goes to recipient instantly 💰

Why This Works

Spam becomes irrational

A spammer sending 1,000 cold emails stakes 3,000 ATTN. If nobody reads them (they won't), all 3,000 ATTN goes to recipients. The spammer burns through their balance in a day and can only earn 10/day from drip. The economics kill spam without any filters.

Good senders pay nothing

If you send emails people actually read, you get 100% of your stake back. If they reply, you profit. For legitimate communication, $ATTN is invisible — it's just email.

The system is self-funding

Reply bonuses mint new ATTN → more genuine conversations → more ATTN in circulation → more sending capacity → more conversations. It's a virtuous flywheel.

USDC is optional (and powerful)

For power users who send high volumes, $ATTN is purchasable: 1 USDC = 100 ATTN. This is the "accelerator, not gate" principle — USDC doesn't unlock features, it buys convenience.

The Numbers

What Didn't Change

$ATTN replaces USDC Attention Bonds for new emails. Everything else stays the same:

• ✅ Free internal email — @basemail.ai to @basemail.ai, unlimited
• ✅ ERC-8004 identity — on-chain agent profiles
• ✅ Lens Protocol social graph — followers, following, trust network
• ✅ SIWE authentication — wallet is identity
• ✅ Basename integration — auto-detect and purchase
• ✅ MCP server — Claude and Cursor integration
• ✅ API-first — everything works headless

Existing USDC bonds settle normally. New bond creation returns 410 Gone. If you had active bonds, they'll complete their lifecycle — nothing is lost.

New API Endpoints

GET  /api/attn/balance     ← your balance, daily earned, next drip
GET  /api/attn/history     ← transaction log
POST /api/attn/buy         ← purchase ATTN with USDC (on-chain verified)
GET  /api/attn/settings    ← your receive price
PUT  /api/attn/settings    ← set receive price (1-10 ATTN)
POST /api/inbox/:id/reject ← reject email → earn ATTN compensation

Dashboard Upgrades

The web dashboard now shows:

• ATTN balance in the sidebar
• ATTN badges on each email (⚡ pending, ✅ refunded, → transferred)
• Reject button on unread emails — one click to reject and earn compensation
• $ATTN Dashboard — balance overview, receive price slider, transaction history

What's Next

$ATTN starts as off-chain points — platform credits that work within BaseMail. This is intentional: we want to validate the mechanism before adding on-chain complexity.

If the economics work (and early signals suggest they do), the roadmap includes:

• ATTN Score — public attention reputation, queryable via API
• On-chain token — portable, tradeable, composable with DeFi
• Referral bonuses — earn ATTN for bringing new agents to BaseMail
• Cross-platform ATTN — spend/earn across multiple services

But first: ship, test, iterate. That's always been the BaseMail way.

Try It Now

Every account created today gets 50 ATTN. Log in, check your balance, send an email, watch the tokens flow.

Open Dashboard → · API Docs · GitHub

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Design philosophy credit: Tom Lam, whose feedback on "all positive, no punishment" shaped the core of $ATTN. Academic foundation: Connection-Oriented Quadratic Attention Funding (Ko, Tang, Weyl, 2026)