Mirror’s Creator Economy：How does the Write-to-Earn Mode Work？

2022-03-02, 07:06

Summary

1. Mirror is a decentralized platform that provides content creation services. Users can freely write, publish, and disseminate any content on it. But the platform itself has no access to reviewing and modifying any content.
2. Mirror also supports text-editing and Markdown syntax functions as well as adopts the very popular concept of content blocks.
3. Mirror is not just a platform that offers posting services. It can also quickly create a DAO based on its crowdfunding and voting functions.
4. The Ethereum wallet address provides Mirror’s users with a decentralized identity, and all transactions on Mirror are also paid in Ether. Arweave provides distributed storage for user writing data.

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As a decentralized content creation platform, Mirror was created by Denis Nazarov, a former partner of a16z. Users can freely write, publish, and disseminate any content on Mirror. The platform does not have the authority to review and modify any content. Moreover, Mirror tokenizes user-created content, and these content works can be self-published on Mirror, which makes decentralized writing truly possible. Having attracted tremendous attention, the project now best exemplifies Web 3.0 in the creator economy.

Six fundamental features of Mirror

Dissimilar to the traditional content creation platforms such as WeChat Sub_script_ions, Weibo, Douban, etc Mirror has achieved decentralization. Additionally, Mirror is not only a platform for posting content but also a community collaboration with super social attributes. By taking advantage of these features, it is also the major publishing platform for many DAOs. So, what are the fundamental features of Mirror?

They are Entries, Crowdfunds, Editions, Auctions, Splits, and Token Race. Next, we will introduce some of them in detail.

Entries
Mirror's Entries function is open to everyone. Users can start this function by only connecting to an Ethereum wallet. Mirror supports regular text editing and Markdown syntax functions, which are similar to traditional content creation platforms. In addition, it also adopts the very popular concept of content blocks, which allows users to insert text, videos, and links at will, as well as crowdfunding and auction information. Users can take a live view. The text editing interface is clean and refreshing, similar to the pages of Notion, a note-taking software.

Users can set the form of the article to be published and decide on whether to cast their own articles into NFT through the settings in the upper right corner of the content publishing page. If the user doesn’t plan to put the article on the chain, no fee will be charged for the content publishing; if the user chooses to publish the article on the distributed storage chain provided by Arweave, a certain gas fee will be collected. Besides, users can also convert their articles into NFTs by ticking the NFT checkbox in the upper right corner of the page.
As a decentralized platform, undoubtedly, Mirror exceedingly appeals to content creators. After all, Mirror doesn’t review any created content and frees them from sensitive words. Writers here can freely create works as they deem fit.

Crowdfunds
Users can raise funds for projects or ideas through the Crowdfunds function on Mirror. Unlike general crowdfunding platforms, the Mirror’ is essentially a smart contract on Ethereum. Before creating, creators can issue tokens based on the articles to be created. These tokens are equivalent to shares. Those who participate in the crowdfunding deposit ETH to support the creator's writing and receive the corresponding tokens. After completing the articles, creators will mint the works into NFTs for sale. The previous crowdfunders can also gain a share of revenue according to a certain mechanism.

Crowdfunding projects are certainly not limited to writing. Users can also post paintings, movies, and NFTs for crowdfunding. Specifically, before initiating crowdfunding, users, according to the crowdfunding rules, need to introduce project details to ordinary users, set target amounts and revenue sharing methods. We can say that this feature has not only changed the way content creators obtain revenue, but also greatly broadened the usage scenarios for Mirror.

Token Race
As mentioned above, Mirror is more than just a platform that provides posting services. Its Crowdfund and voting features allow many DAOs to be published on it. In fact, when content creators initiate crowdfunding, those who participate in crowdfunding form a DAO, and the tokens they hold represent voting rights. Mirror has complete voting tools, providing lots of functions such as voting for proposals, token snapshots, multi-signature, and proxy voting.

In short, content creators can freely create articles on Mirror, mint NFTs, initiate crowdfunding, and conduct voting for governance. These functions on Mirror complement each other and form a completely closed-loop creator economy.

Token Economy

Mirror.xyz is built on Ethereum and the Arweave chain. The Ethereum wallet address provides Mirrors’ users with a decentralized identity, and all transactions on Mirror are also paid in Ether. Meanwhile, Arweave provides distributed storage for user writing data. Referring to the "Play-to-Earn" mode proposed by Axie Infinity, Mirror also has a "Write-to-Earn" mode, which is one of the reasons why Mirror can increase in popularity in the coming years

However, the Write-to-Earn mode is completely different from the Play-to-Earn in logic. After users publish articles on Mirror, they can get ETH rewards from supporters via the Crowdfund function, while supporters will get the corresponding tokens of the project in return. These tokens will also represent the voting rights in the DAO. This makes Mirror more of a crowdfunding platform for creators compared to a content creation platform.

Furthermore, Mirror.xyz launched its official token, WRITE. At the release of the project, users register for a Mirror account only after they burn a WRITE. However, there were few WRITEs then, and only ten authors with the highest rankings in the users’ vote could get a WRITE each week. Therefore, it was really hard to get a WRITE on social media. It was not until October last year that burning a WRITE was no longer a requirement to register a Mirror account, but registering a subdomain under Mirror.xyz.

Conclusion

Mirror is ambitious. However, it is not limited to being a content creation platform with a token reward function, nor is it satisfied with becoming a decentralized medium, but it plans to revolutionize the creator economy in Web 2.0. In the future, Mirror can directly connect creators with their fans who will be able to offer them crowdfunding support and even help them to create DAOs easily.

Web 3.0 is pioneering an era. It is only imagination that can restrict our possibilities. It is by combining various concepts such as fan economy, NFT, and DAO that Mirror applies blockchain technology to the creator economy in an unexpected yet reasonable way. We look forward to more creative projects, and we will also share them with you at Gate.io Blog.

Author: Ashley H, Gate.io Researcher; Translator: Cedar. W
*This article represents only the researcher's views and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
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