Author:Shawn

Source: https://shawn.mirror.xyz/o0TQHboHKVWfBaxNknBH4OjtXOgUwuBFPzchJWmodho

Editor’s Note:

Mirror was founded in 2020 and is not only a blockchain-powered content creation platform but also a community collaboration platform. It offers a wide range of Web3-native publishing and economic tools to support creators, communities, and DAOs. These tools include, but are not limited to, article publishing (Entries), crowdfunding (Crowdfunds), digital collectibles (Editions), auctions (Auctions), collaborative contribution splits (Splits), and community voting (TokenRace).

On June 2, 2021, Mirror raised a funding round with a valuation of at least $100 million, securing a minimum investment of $10 million. Notable investors participating in this round include USV and a16z.

Over the past two years, the content publishing platform Mirror has been constantly grappling with strategic uncertainties, including disputes over curation direction, product vs protocol, and challenges in achieving mass adoption.

With the departure of Mirror co-founder Graeme Boy in November 2022 and the formal departure of Rafa (DAO leader) in January 2023, the internal debates within the core team regarding the product direction have finally come to a close.

During the first half of 2022, numerous major companies and startup teams approached me, expressing their interest in creating competitors to Mirror. Unfortunately, none of them succeeded. Despite Mirror’s ups and downs, it remains the strongest player in this niche market, largely due to the benchmark set by its peers.

Recently, during a workshop at the lensfans hackathon, I discussed the various challenges that Mirror has encountered, and many friends expressed their interest, reaching out to me privately. In this reflection, I have compiled my own firsthand experiences of being involved with Mirror.

Dispute over curation direction at Mirror

Prior to Mirror’s internal research, there were evaluations of several directions:

● Recommendation algorithms

● Professional curation teams

● Mirror DAO handling curation

● Web3 allowing everyone to participate in voting for curation

When Mirror started its cold launch in early 2021, it adopted the $WRITE Race, which falls under option 4 (Web3 allowing everyone to participate in voting). In August 2021, participants in the voting received an airdrop of $WRITE tokens. However, the $WRITE Race voting was terminated in October.

There were several main reasons for terminating the $WRITE Race voting:

● Severe issues with bribery and Sybil attacks

● Mirror’s team was hesitant to engage with the token economy model of $WRITE due to compliance concerns in the United States. However, they still wanted to incentivize voting and were caught in a dilemma.

By the end of 2021, option 3 (Mirror DAO handling curation) was implemented with strong support from co-founder Graeme Boy, and Rafa established Mirror DAO to lead this effort. After a six-month trial period, the results were mediocre. Mirror DAO consisted mainly of a few hundred influential individuals who had little time to participate in voting for curation. Eventually, the curation process devolved into option 2 (professional curation teams) within a small circle.

In 2022, the two co-founders, Graeme Boy and Denis Nazarov, started to have notable differences regarding the curation direction.

As an example, on the day of the official launch of writing NFTs, Denis Nazarov tweeted about it. I replied, saying, “With writing NFTs, we can finally restart voting for curation on Twitter.” Denis Nazarov liked the reply, but Graeme Boy opposed the idea. Both Denis Nazarov and Graeme Boy engaged in multiple discussions under that tweet, but later deleted their comments.

With Graeme Boy’s departure, Denis Nazarov continued to advocate for writing NFTs as the primary means of curation at Mirror.

Product or Protocol

Under the leadership of Graeme Boy, the Mirror development team prioritized building a protocol rather than a product, preferably with the front-end handled by third-party participants within the ecosystem. However, the Mirror front-end was severely lacking, with basic functionalities missing and obvious bugs that went unaddressed for months. While users complained about the poor front-end experience, the development team, as early supporters of the OP layer2, enthusiastically launched various NFT experimental projects, leading to the creation of the writing NFTs we see today.

One of the core Mirror developers, Patrick, wrote an article titled “Thoughts on DAO Tooling,” discussing how successful DAO tools ultimately become protocols, which sparked considerable discussion. After the controversy, Patrick has since left Mirror.

Building a protocol requires an ecosystem. However, developers involved in the Mirror ecosystem received no financial compensation, with many even covering the server costs themselves. Meanwhile, Mirror collected a 2.5% on-chain fee. The Mirror DAO treasury held nearly a million dollars (from the 2.5% fee income generated by the Mirror product), with the original intention to partially subsidize Mirror ecosystem developers. However, no funds were ever paid out. When I asked Rafa about this, he did not deny that the concerns about US compliance may have played a role (since the funds were considered income for a US-based company).

Today, under the leadership of Denis Nazarov, Mirror seems to be shifting back towards focusing on product development.

Pitfalls of Mass Adoption

In late 2021, Mirror brought in Veronica Saron, the former Marketing Leader of Pokémon Go, to build a team and help drive mass adoption for Mirror. However, Veronica Saron eventually left, and I was also involved in that effort, feeling the frustrations and challenges firsthand. Mirror failed to address the high barriers of entry, such as wallet integration, and couldn’t compete with platforms like Substack or Medium in terms of monetization. Additionally, the front-end editing and user experience were far from user-friendly. With these limitations, it was difficult to imagine who, apart from Web3 enthusiasts, would use Mirror.

The crucial issue is that Mirror did not allocate resources to address these problems throughout 2022. Mass adoption is not something that can be achieved solely through high marketing investments.

Core Team Avoidance of Tokenomics

The Mirror core team has been particularly cautious about US compliance issues, which has sparked numerous discussions and debates that I won’t delve into here.

Lastly

On April 3, 2022, I wrote an article titled “Thoughts on Mirror DAO,” which addressed the aforementioned issues and proposed potential solutions. I shared it with Rafa. At that time, the Mirror core team gathered in New York from various parts of the world for a closed-door meeting, and Rafa even traveled from Germany amidst the pandemic to attend. On that day, Rafa reached out to me, asking if I would be willing to present the article at the closed-door meeting with the Mirror team, as it captured the ongoing debates.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I understand the challenges of starting and running a business, especially in the Web3 space, where idealism and reality often collide. Personally, I support Denis Nazarov in the direction he has taken with Mirror. I also have respect for Graeme Boy and Rafa, who exited the project, as they were driven by pure idealism.

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