#5 The Moving Parts
Understanding web3 implementation
We have been looking at some amazing concepts, mechanisms and design behind blockchain and web3 over the past 4 days. But the question we’d ask ourselves is - how do we create anything of value using this? To answer this, and to get a step closer towards becoming web3 natives, we will today explore how mirror.xyz works. The idea is to deconstruct, step-by-step, the processes it carries out to run a decentralized platform - helping us understand the moving parts.
Mirror.xyz
Mirror, is a cyptocurrency and blockchain powered digital publishing platform. Basically, it is like Medium or Substack, but run on blockchain technology.
According to the website, “Mirror is the next big change in the long history of symbolic communication. Through a decentralized, user-owned, crypto-based network, Mirror’s publishing platform revolutionizes the way we express, share and monetize our thoughts.”
Most NFTs traded online have been for digital art and music files. Mirror.xyz makes it possible to turn various forms of creative writing into NFTs, whether it is a poem, an essay, novel, or short story.
Since we are into writing, we got into it head first.
Quality Control
How Mirror used to operate was: There was an early community of writers, each of these writers has a $WRITE token. Then there was a contest - $WRITE RACE was a weekly showdown between people joining the Mirror. The community votes for who gets the membership next. At the end of each 2 hour round, the top 10 people are airdropped one $WRITE token, which can be redeemed for Mirror membership, a subdomain, and future community perks.
Neat right? It helped the community grow by choosing the next members. Here is a sample for one such round:
The Awakening
As the NFT space kept evolving, the Mirror community had a townhall, where they asked some existential questions:
The $WRITE Race has focused on a specific network of participants. How can the community develop a more inclusive and participatory process?
Hence, they paused the $WRITE race and opened it to all. Now anyone can go to the platform and publish their work. Not only publish, but you could do a host of things:
Publishing. Start a blog where posts are permanently stored on the decentralized web and authorized by your private key. Writers have earned thousands of dollars worth of ETH on single blog posts by monetizing their content through web3 business models.
Note: We are planning on publishing our first ever Substack post (and subsequently all others) on Mirror. Join us on our discord server to be a part of this process.
Crowdfunds. Bootstrap a community treasury by issuing tokens and NFTs to contributors in exchange for ETH. They have helped filmmakers, writers, musicians, e-sports teams, grant giving DAOs, media DAOs, and party DAOs start their communities.
NFT Editions. One can build their community by selling a custom number of NFTs at a fixed price. Members have used editions to support open source projects, donate to relief efforts in Afghanistan, provide early access to an upcoming book, and sell tickets to IRL minting experiences.
Splits. Share revenue with collaborators and other communities. Members have used splits to share NFT revenue between core contributors on a project, co-authors on an essay, and charitable donations.
Token Race. Launch a community governance proposal that’s fun and social. Onboard members to your campaign, collectively decide which NFTs to collect, and decide what topics should be covered in a community discussion. Your community can even vote with NFTs. Basically, you can have your own version of $WRITE race for your project.
Auctions. Sell 1 of 1 NFTs to the biggest collectors in your community and discover your project’s super fans. Members have auctioned off research reports, funding announcements, and music.
Imagine just 6 features that are bringing limitless opportunity to you. Mirror is much more than a writing platform. This platform can crowdfund your ideas, it can help you build a team, it can move masses for your donation campaigns.
Native web3 thinking
How does exploring Mirror help our web3 thinking? Minting NFTs can be done on any platform, really. But the way we are interacting with these platforms is evolving. It’s complex - a community which talks about the power of communities, and helps develop communities within itself, in-turn building itself.
We have talked about power of communities, about governance, and this was sneak peek into the implementation of those ideas in real time.