Web3 content veteran Mirror was acquisition to explain its transformation journey and new social product kiosk

Original | Odaily

Author | Aurantium aurantium

On May 2, Web3 content publishing platform Mirror announced its acquisition by Paragraph. The Mirror team will continue to operate independently and shift their focus to developing Kiosks, a Web3 social app based on Farcaster. Mirror's parent company, Reflective Technologies Inc., revealed that it raised $10 million from Electric Capital, in addition to additional support from a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Variant.

Mirror launched internal testing in 21 and quickly became an important creative platform and tool in the Web3 field, but due to longer factors such as positioning, development route, and products, its market share declined rapidly. The current main official content and creator platform is Medium, and Paragraph has successfully completed its acquisition as Mirror's main competitor in the Web3 creator space. In this article, Odaily takes a look at Mirror's past and present, as well as its latest product, the Kiosk.

Mirror's past and present lives

Mirror was founded by Denis Nazarov, former partner of a16z crypto, at the end of 2020, Mirror released the initial product prototype, Mirror stores content on Arweave, longest people understand it as the Web3 version of Medium or Substack, is a "decentralization" content publishing platform, but this is not outstanding in terms of technology and imagination, the content creation platform is already the red ocean, ** What innovative route does Mirror want to rely on to stand out from the encirclement?**

At that time, Mirror's answer was toB, as a crowdfunding and media tool for DAOs. Back then, Mirror's self-resolution was: "This is the basic Web3 toolkit for sharing and fundraising for anything." From writing about your latest ideas, to building a home for the next big DAO. （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 features does Mirror offer besides content creation?**

First of all, Mirror supports the sale of NFTs for works, and if users buy this NFT, it will be used as a reward for the creator (Mirror is divided into 2.5%), in addition to supporting direct crowdfunding of the project, and can also issue coins.

In short, Mirror wants all projects that need crowdfunding to be published, fundraised, and updated on their direction and progress through Mirror, such as The Krause House (Crowdfunding 1000 ETH, soft rug) for basketball teams, Ethereum: The Infinite Garden (Crowdfunding 1035 ETH), and Wallet Balance Wallet (Crowdfunding). 883 ETH) and so on.

Pure or lack of functionality

It's worth noting that in the early days of the product, Mirror, a feature that is common on content platforms, was not available. Including subscriptions, readings, portals and other functions, creators cannot directly analyze and promote, and it is difficult for readers or users to track directly. Creators need to use other platforms for promotion, and features such as subscriptions and analytics need to use third-party tools.

The Mirror team believes that all of the above belong to the requirements of the application layer, and hopes to leave it to the community, and the team only builds the underlying services. Since the data is published in Arweave with no restrictions and is readable to all developers and users, "advanced" product and feature iterations in the ecosystem are left to the community.

However, handing over the development of the above features to the community does not mean that the Mirror team is laissez-faire, and the Mirror team will communicate with the team that has developed excellent Mirror add-on products and invite them to join the Mirror DAO to build an ecosystem.

Route swing

Mirror has achieved good data and achievements in the above-mentioned toB field, but in August 2022, Mirror announced the delisting of all NFT and crowdfunding related features, returning to the red sea of pure toC. However, the following year, the Subscribe to Mint feature was launched. 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 do not know what the truth is.

On the other hand, the DAO narrative is no longer the hot Bull Market of 21 years, crowdfunding and coin issuance products have emerged, and Mirror has gradually lost market share under the combined effect of longer factors.

Turn to Kiosk

With Paragraph's acquisition of Mirror, Paragraph will take over the management of Mirror's products, design systems, and brand. The Mirror team will move to Kiosk, a Web3 social app based on Farcaster.

At present, Mirror has not disclosed the details of the project, and Odaily has compiled the key content of its existing materials as follows: "Kiosk is a new Farcaster client that combines social and on-chain. It enables users to transact on-chain while socializing on-chain. Kiosks make it easy for users to turn images into NFT, discover and purchase fren favorite assets, and gather like-minded collectors and community members in Token-driven channels or group chats.

The goal of the kiosk is to break down the barriers between on-chain social and on-chain transactions, enabling users to transact and interact on social media more seamlessly, thereby driving the development of decentralization social media. ”

Based on the above, it can be seen that the product aims to give users the ability to issue and trade assets on social media, and the service object has also shifted to the community, and users can currently enter the waitlist by minting the NFT of the official announcement article in Mirror.