Web3 content veteran Mirror was acquired, explaining its transformation process and new social product Kiosk

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Nanzhi

On May 2, Web3 content publishing platform Mirror announced that it was acquired by Paragraph . The Mirror team will continue to operate independently and will shift its focus to developing Kiosk, a Web3 social application based on Farcaster. Mirrors parent company Reflective Technologies Inc. revealed that it has raised $10 million from Electric Capital, with additional support from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures and Variant.

Mirror started internal testing in 2021 and quickly became an important creation platform and tool in the Web3 field. However, due to factors such as positioning, development path, and products, its market share has declined rapidly. Currently, the most important official content and creator platform is Medium, and Paragraph, as Mirrors main competitor in the Web3 creator field, has successfully completed its acquisition. Odaily Planet Daily will interpret the past and present of Mirror and its latest product Kiosk in this article.

Mirror Past and Present

Mirror was founded by Denis Nazarov, a former partner of a16z crypto. At the end of 2020, Mirror released its initial product prototype. Mirror stores content on Arweave. Most people understand it as the Web3 version of Medium or Substack, a decentralized content publishing platform, but this is not outstanding in terms of technology and imagination. Content creation platforms are already a red ocean. What innovative route does Mirror want to rely on to stand out?

At that time, Mirrors answer was toB, as a crowdfunding and media tool for DAOs. Mirrors self-interpretation at the time was: This is the essential web3 toolkit for sharing and funding anything. From writing about your latest idea, to building a home for the next big DAO.

So what else does Mirror offer besides content creation?

First of all, Mirror supports the issuance of NFTs for works. If users purchase this NFT, it will be used as a reward for the creator (Mirror gets 2.5%). In addition, it also supports direct crowdfunding of projects and the issuance of tokens.

In short, Mirror hopes that all projects that need crowdfunding will be published and raised on its platform, and the direction and progress will be updated through Mirror. Well-known examples include the basketball team The Krause House (crowdfunding 1000 ETH, soft rug), the movie Ethereum: The Infinite Garden (crowdfunding 1035 ETH), and the wallet Balance Wallet (crowdfunding 883 ETH).

Purely lacking in functionality

It is worth noting that in the early stages of the product, Mirror does not have any of the common features found on content platforms, including subscriptions, reading volume, portals, etc. Creators cannot directly analyze and promote, and readers or users cannot directly track. Creators need to use other platforms for promotion, while subscriptions, analysis, and other functions require the use of third-party tools.

The Mirror team believes that the above are all application layer requirements and hopes to leave them to the community. The team will only build underlying services. Since the data is published in Arweave, there are no restrictions and all developers and users can read the data. Therefore, the advanced products and function iterations in the ecosystem are left to the community.

However, handing over the development of the above functions to the community does not mean that the Mirror team will let them do whatever they want. The Mirror team will communicate with the teams that develop excellent Mirror additional products and invite them to join the Mirror DAO to jointly build the ecosystem.

Route swing

Mirror has achieved impressive data and achievements in the above-mentioned toB field, but in August 2022, Mirror announced the removal of all NFT and crowdfunding related functions, returning to the red ocean of pure toC. But the Subscribe to Mint function was launched again the following year. This series of mysterious operations may be related to the fact that the team is located in the United States and is affected by regulatory pressure, but we don’t know the truth.

On the other hand, the DAO narrative is no longer as hot as it was in the 2021 bull market, with crowdfunding and coin issuance products emerging one after another. Due to the combined effect of various factors, Mirror has gradually lost its market share.

Switch to Kiosk

After Paragraph acquires Mirror, Paragraph will take over the management of Mirror products, design systems and brands. The Mirror team will move to Kiosk, a Web3 social application based on Farcaster.

At present, Mirror has not disclosed the details of the project. Odaily summarizes the key contents of its existing information as follows: Kiosk is a new Farcaster client that combines social and on-chain. It allows users to conduct on-chain transactions while socializing on the chain. With Kiosk, users can easily convert pictures into NFTs, discover and purchase assets collected by friends, and gather like-minded collectors and community members in token-driven channels or group chats.

Kiosk aims to break down the barriers between on-chain social networking and on-chain transactions, allowing users to trade and interact on social media more seamlessly, thereby promoting the development of decentralized social media.”

Based on the above content, it can be seen that this product aims to empower users to issue and trade assets on social media, and the service objects have also shifted to the community. Currently, users can enter the Waitlist by minting NFTs of official announcement articles in Mirror.

This article is sourced from the internet: Web3 content veteran Mirror was acquired, explaining its transformation process and new social product Kiosk

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