I'm also fine with making it optional in the upcoming version 2 to lower the barrier for adoption.
My goal is not to make contact info optional. I do understand value of such information. The problem is choosing one specific means of communication as mandatory, instead of letting the operators choose the one that is most convenient to them.
My primary gripe with email is not my privacy. I decided to remove it from my ContactInfo upon noticing that I skim over the messages and discard them in bulk as spam. At this point reaching me through email became unlikely: I would probably delete the message.