With our #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc efforts we put all intelligence on the end devices, and architecutally separate it from a transport layer that routes safely and fast but knows nothing.
There are a dozen or more #chatmail servers across many jurisdictions, all safely interopable with each other and classic servers.
Turned out we can dumb down email servers by relying on cryptography instead of IP reputation and ai/spam filtering. And have 200ms delivery times. We are not done :)