Will Writers Earn via NFTs in the Near Future?
Mirror.xyz and the pitfalls of Content Dystopia
Welcome to Content Dystopia
Hey Guys,
With the Web3 hype I come across a lot of experiments in the future of blogging and writing. As NFT platforms multiply like blog articles, it’s only a matter of time when Medium is cloned optimized for NFT monetization schemes.
That may be the fate of Mirror!
https://mirror.xyz/
I’ve been able to find scant info on this Medium clone for crypto? Mirror says it’s the essential web3 toolkit for sharing and funding anything. From writing about your latest idea, to building a home for the next big DAO. I don’t get it!
I’ve seen dozens of blogging platforms come and go in my time, they say it’s for everyone, but I need to integrate my ETH wallet even to start and get paid! What kind monetization accessibility is that?
While I have no doubt that writers need to find new ways in the ownership economy to monetize their work and creativity, I’m not certain about so-called decentralized platforms.
Mirror forces me to be a crypto bro:
If I say I don’t have a wallet, I need to further download something:
Listen, I’m okay with Substack suggesting I use their App, I need to build a home base for my writing and creativity, but this is the very problem of friction that Mirror is creating. This is not how you on-board everyone!
According to SimiliarWeb’s google chrome extension, Mirror seems to be most popular in China, this is an immediate red flag for me. It appears to have been founded in December, 2020, but it only has 3 million monthly views.
That’s not proof of product-market fit.
So what are the incentives to join Mirror?
As of October, 2021, The Mirror Protocol now accepts any contributor as long as they have an Ethereum address and wallet. That sounds like an inclusive community.
Ethereum-based decentralized blogging platform Mirror has opened its doors to the wider public after months of running vote-based contributions only.
Mirror sounds like an Ethereum based Reddit where up-voting and down-voting might rule your life!
Mirror was launched in December 2020 to enable selected writers to publish on the decentralized blogging platform. Contributors could gain access by getting voted for in weekly competitions using the platform’s native token, WRITE, with just 10 content creators selected per week. That sounds as terrible as any Telegram crypto community, I’ve heard of.
This appears to be yet another scheme of a16z. Founded by former Andreessen Horowitz crypto partner Denis Nazarov, Mirror resembles Medium, the blogging tool used for essays and newsletters. Union Square Ventures, has invested at least $10 million across two recent seed round financings from investors including USV and Andreessen Horowitz.
On Crunchbase, I do not even see their total amount of funding, this is not very transparent, and is yet another red flag.
Our resident blogging expert Casey seems to think that Mirror is incredible:
I honestly have no idea how he arrived at these conclusions or ratings, perhaps it was a sponsored post.
Mirror.xyz provides tools for writers to earn in cryptocurrency rather than through typical cash transactions. In addition, authors can seek crowdfunding for creative projects via non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be continuously traded and keep earning on the writer’s behalf.
Honestly Mirror’s best option is to scale with NFT hype. However given that we are heading for a crypto winter, and likely already in a recession, I’m not clear how it will manage to do that?
I could not find the entity known as Denis Nazarov on LinkedIn, which is also not a good sign for his project’s credibility. Though he seems to be involved in Mediachain.io as well. Here is his profile on a16z. Well, I’m not getting goosebumps. In fact, I’m getting a bit of the opposite.
His article What comes after open-source, has an ideology that I’ve recently come across from someone else. I’m getting all too familiar with the rhetoric and playbook of a16z.
So many promises Chris Dixon, so much revelation on how VCs are creating future propaganda and social media amplified vision papers, welcome to the era of Cathie Wood and Elon Musk Tweets. One of our resident Substack literature writers has also gotten into NFTs I have noticed.
The semi-anonymous Twitter account of Dennis Nazarov is called “literature” on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Iiterature
The lack of transparency is really worrisome. Shouldn’t decentralized mean more open and clear?
NFTs at the Crossroads of Medium and Substack
The former Andreessen Horowitz partner is working to build what can be described as a crypto publishing platform, not unlike Medium or Substack.
In the new model, readers help fund writers in exchange for NFTs. Mirror.xyz recently raised $10 million from Union Square Ventures, Andresseen Horowitz, and others at a $100 million valuation, The Information reported and courtesy of Forune’s NFTy 50, omg okay. Clearly this is going to be big!
a16z is trying to corner of the market of NFT platforms, it’s embarrassing to admit that they are also a major funder of Substack. These Venture Capital ties can bind a product to a community and to a shared narrative that is more like marketing and public relations than reality. For unsuspecting creators, this worries me.
Just as it worries me of how Medium has turned into a content mill for low level gig-economy slave writers. I don’t approve, it’s highly unethical.
That I cannot even figure out Mirror’s real model is another major red flag.
Early Stage Content Platforms
So we don’t have product-market fit, we have a sketchy leader, we have VC ties that are monopolistic, and we have the vague notion of NFTs empowering creativity or something akin to content curation in a niche community. What can you expect from a two-year old startup? Just give me a valid reason to believe in your solution!
Mediachain says it is “Building a more connected world for creators and audiences.” According to Mirror’s LinkedIn it has over 10 employees.
Mirror.xyz
I cannot even give a fair verdict, but I am not super enchanted by what I could find.
Between Medium, Ghost, Mailchaimp and others, Twitter Notes might at least bring something fresh. Content online has been on a downward trajectory for a long time with the rise of social media feeds that have polluted and corrupted our attention spans, including videos and Entertainment apps like TikTok.
American BigTech and the defense sector are so worried about ByteDance’s supremacy, U.S. FCC commissioner wants Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores. If you can’t beat them, just block them! Says American Capitalism.
In an age of censorship at such scale, it’s becoming difficult to find a place to blog in relatively safety. China is going to censor even social media comments at such a scale that you cannot even imagine. Facebook, Google and Microsoft boast about their AI being able to automate censorship of misinformation.
Censorship on one side, and AI-automation and AI synthetic creation of content on the other. Obviously writers are going to be more squeezed than ever. Do you live in the content mill of SEO of the old world like on Medium and Wordpress, or do you voyage into the unknown with Substack, Ghost or Mirror.xyz and others?
Do you set sail with Twitter Notes or Facebook Bulletin for that matter? LinkedIn Newsletters tethered to LinkedIn courses and LinkedIn Audio events for a creator trip by Microsoft? It’s seriously dystopian, so as little as I trust Denis and Andreessen Horowitz, the alternatives are sadly not much better if a lot more sketchy.
It all depends on what kind of a creator you are!
If you are an Inspirational creator, Instagram hashtags and TikTok can do you well.
If you are an indie journalist and enjoy information, you are options are disappearing fast.
I’m not going to suddenly fill my wallet with ETH and start a Twitch account, but then again you never know, we all need to eat.
You can check out Mirror’s Twitter here.
https://twitter.com/viamirror
If TikTok gets censored by the West, what happens to social commerce of scale? ByteDance and China is already winning. Social commerce is how people use live-streaming to engage others in E-commerce purchasing, among other things.
Sadly for Substack to become the Shopify for Creators, it would literally actually have to learn how to enable that.
As for TikTok to be banned from app stores, it could actually happen. Carr’s letter, dated June 24 on FCC letterhead, said if the Apple and Alphabet do not remove TikTok from their app stores, they should provide statements to him by July 8, according to CNBC.
Twitter, an ailing network full of bots, remains an underworld for crypto projects. Twitter’s influencers have pretty much “taken control” of the social graph there. This does not make me feel very comfortable.
Social media has been corrupted, from a virtual town square to a megaphone for the elites. That is never good for free speech or freedom of expression. Many Creators still buy fake Twitter followers, it’s relatively easy to spot. Just as the Crypto community does on Telegram, it’s a standard operating procedure.
I had to leave the blockchain startup scene, I became full of unease due to the scale of fraud and unethical community practices I was witnessing, even from some very well-funded startups and Silicon Valley takes on crypto, now mysteriously and suddenly called “Web3”.
How Web3 has moved from Twitter to Telegram to Discord is ominous. What will GenZ spawn in terms of content platforms? Twitter doesn’t even have a good CTR ratio, click-through-rate. You need to go viral on Twitter, Hacker News or Reddit even to get basic traction on an article you write. That’s not a lead generation mechanism you can rely on. It’s a very low ROI game for a Creator.
Perhaps as NFTs scale in credibility and usage, we will see a platform rise that empowers Creators. Even Shopify is getting into NFTs. Salesforce has as well, what can they do for writers, artists, poets, musicians and community events? Certainly a lot over the next decade. One can hope!
Do you know of an innovative project that utilizes NFTs to help creators or writers monetize?
At this point I have more faith in Roblox’s internal currency then I do in being paid in crypto, maybe I’m just old. NFTs? I’m not betting on it. I’m much more worried about A.I. automating most of the content online in the next two decades than I am excited about the low probability of Creators being liberated by Web3.
This was a little bit of a rant, so thanks for reading!
Do I want a cartoon profile that’s anonymous in the future to represent my ID online? Ready or not working/blogging on platforms now feels more like a game than anything remotely real. Time to hype the next fad, crypto children!
Great article Michael. Before deciding to write my newsletter on Substack, I came very close to choosing a web3 publishing platform similar to Mirror. Like you though, I was put off signing up as I didn't have an Etherium account that they were insisting upon. NFTs 'maybe' the future - but I'm happy to stick with Substack for now!