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This is what mailinabox does (https://mailinabox.email/) to combat spam and it has worked remarkably well. In the few years I've been running my own mail server I have received ZERO spam in my inbox.

For more info, the technique is called greylisting https://postgrey.schweikert.ch/

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Ehh, but this is not greylisting? Greylisting temporarily rejects an email and requests the sender try again after a while.

greylisting is not the same.

greylisting is responding with a temp error under the assumption that most spam won't retry on temp errors, which isn't the case for most spam anymore.

real bounces are permanent errors.

Greylisting is one of those techniques I always loved, as it was so simple and logical.

As you say these days spammers will retry, but its an approach that still has value, because in the period between the initial delivery-attempt (which is rejected) and the final one (where it would be attempted) it is more likely that the sender has already appeared on DNS-based blocklists.

But there is also the problem that some people don’t want to wait multiple minutes or hours for an email, like password reset emails. I see too many disadvantages.

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