Although most of the crypto space is stuck in the apathetic depths of the bear market, there are a lot of interesting things happening at the intersection of content and crypto (but also everywhere in crypto really).
I’ll be spending a lot of time trying out new crypto media platforms, digging into interesting use cases, and generally getting deep into the weeds of how media will be impacted by crypto.
But first, I need somewhere to make my home base and put my thoughts down.
I’d imagine Medium, WordPress, or Substack would be the quickest and easiest to get started, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do - explore the space.
This leaves me with two main options: Mirror and Paragraph.
Typically, when choosing between two platforms, I tend to pick one as quickly as possible and move on. But, since I’ll also be writing this article on it, I spent quite a bit of time reading through docs, help articles, listening to interviews, and more.
I’m looking forward to any feedback, other platforms I should consider, use cases I may be overlooking, or anything else that would be relevant.
What Matters to Me (And What Doesn’t)
UX/UI
This is easily the most important aspect of choosing a platform for me. I can handle some friction on the backend, like with the editor or other things. But for readers, signing up needs to feel as natural and intuitive as Substack. Any added friction is a major problem in my eyes.
SEO
Although I suspect we’re in the last days of Google Search being the dominant way content is surfaced, AI bots will still need to be able to crawl content and understand it. And if SEO dies slower than it should, I want to be able to benefit from it.
Crypto Superpowers
This isn’t something that I feel a strong need for immediately, but would like to have optionality for later. So, things like being able to split revenue with contributors or composability with social applications are things I’m paying attention to.
Collectible Posts
If I’m being honest, I feel like collecting a blog post is an extremely ‘meh’ idea, especially as a means to monetize content. Granted, I still need to look into it more, but for me, it feels like digital hoarding. That said, seeing the potential for content curators is interesting.
NFTs
Obviously, NFTs are a lot more than jpegs. But even the current iterations of the more useful versions, such as a subscription pass, just feel like a more friction-heavy version of what’s already available with Web2 tools.
So, I don’t have any immediate plans for using NFTs in content, but I do suspect there will be interesting possibilities soon (or more likely, they already exist and I don’t know about them yet). Basically, I want the optionality of using NFTs in the future, but don’t have an immediate use case for them now.
Content Stored Onchain Forever
I’m not a particularly talented writer and I doubt anything I create needs to live forever. At the same time, having an escape hatch to avoid being trapped in one provider is essential.
My First Impressions of Each Platform as a Reader
Mirror
I remember their $WRITE Race being very interesting during the bull market. Although I didn’t closely follow the developments of Mirror, I’ve read a lot of content from people publishing on the platform.
Pro-Tip: Mirror’s Discover page has a ton of interesting content.
To me, Mirror feels like the OG in the space. Unfortunately, the line between OG and Boomer is getting pretty thin these days. (How old are the Wu-Tang anyway?)
Paragraph
I only recently read my first blog post that was published on Paragraph. Two things immediately stood out to me - the option of highlighting part of the text to mint as an NFT and their integration with Farcaster.
But most importantly, it seems fine, just like any other blog and that’s the most important.
They also have a Discover feed with the option of filtering by topic which is a nice improvement. I don’t find as much interesting content here compared to Mirror, but it’s a newer platform so that’s to be expected.
Paragraph Takes a More Pragmatic Approach
I’ll save my decentralization maximalism for DeFi. For a blog, I just need something that works smoothly. That’s why I prefer the approach Paragraph takes on most things.
Monetizing Content
Although I don’t have any immediate plans to monetize content, this is one of those essential must-have pieces.
Paid subscriptions are the most obvious way (along with ads) that blogs and newsletters make money, but that’s not possible with Mirror. With Mirror, your only option to monetize is from readers paying to collect posts.
In an interview with Web3 Academy, Colin Armstrong of Paragraph mentioned how he doesn’t see collectible content as a sustainable monetization strategy for most creators - something I strongly agree with.
For collectible content to really make sense as a primary monetization model, you kind of need some combination of a big or diehard audience, utility for owning the NFTs, strong selling skills, speculation, or something else.
It feels like trying to force a new behavior when a simple subscription is the most obvious and makes the most sense. Readers are willing to pay money to read content - no need to overcomplicate things.
Paragraph uses Stripe to allow recurring memberships (and crypto soon, I think). They also let you associate an NFT with each membership and that will stay active for as long as the subscription is valid. This allows you to still do things like token-gate content or a Discord channel.
Publishing to Arweave
I’m far more likely to write something embarrassingly wrong that I’d like to delete and pretend never happened than to publish something that will stand the test of time.
With Mirror, all posts are stored on Arweave, meaning they’ll always be available.
Paragraph also lets you save posts to Arweave, but also includes other options such as sending it out as an email newsletter, publishing online, or sending it to wallet subscribers via XMTP.
For me, having the option to exit the system is enough. I don’t need my content to live forever.
Building a Business
This should probably be the first thing on the list as this is something that seems insignificant but actually would be a dealbreaker for me.
With Mirror, your content is tied to your wallet address and can’t be transferred. If your wallet gets compromised, or you need to move to another wallet for whatever reason, you’re out of luck.
Before getting into crypto, I had a WordPress blog that I sold. If I had started that site by publishing content to Mirror, it would have been impossible or extremely complicated to sell. After all, the content can’t be transferred and I’d still hold the private keys forever.
Fortunately, Paragraph has a workaround that would allow you to transfer the account to another address.
SEO
I hope SEO is on its deathbed, but still, it’s the main way people find content now and AI bots will still need to be able to understand what content is about.
You really don’t need to be an expert to understand that URLs that look like this aren’t great for SEO…
With Paragraph though, the slug is editable, so it’s easy to publish a post with a URL that looks like this…
https://m3dia.xyz/mirror-vs-paragraph
It feels a lot like Mirror was created with no consideration for SEO whereas Paragraph put some thought into this.
NFTs
Both platforms allow you to mint an article as an NFT or embed NFTs into your content, and set the network, available supply, and price.
Mirror might take things a little further, for example, making it possible for people to read a collected post in the NFT itself, so you can read it from within a wallet. But this isn’t something I care about.
Paragraph allows you to save any part of an article as an NFT, so you can mint a quote that you want to remember. This feels somewhat cool but I can’t help but feel like it isn’t all that useful. Maybe I’m wrong and not being imaginative enough. Perhaps if there was something like a Web3 Readwise where you could mint content from any publication, that might be more interesting to me.
In general, happy to see NFT options for both platforms even though I don’t have any immediate plans to utilize them.
Crypto Superpowers
Crowdfunds and Splits:
Mirror did a couple of things that really stood out to me as, “Oh shit, that’s pretty cool.” that would be hard if not impossible to do in Web2.
With crowdfunds, an investigative reporter could raise money to research and publish a story on a topic that readers are interested in. This could open up opportunities to cover topics that might have been ignored normally and make it so a writer wouldn’t have to take on the risk of researching a story that nobody cares about.
Splits allow an article to have multiple contributors with each contributor earning a percentage of revenue, and that revenue automatically getting distributed.
These are both really cool. Unfortunately, they’re currently paused on Mirror and Paragraph doesn’t seem to have any equivalent.
Composability:
We’ve seen the power of composability in DeFi so now thinking of what can happen in content, especially as decentralized social platforms get more traction, is going to be fun to watch.
We can see early instances of this with Farcaster and Paragraph.
If there’s a discussion on Farcaster about an article published on Paragraph (and the URL is linked), those comments will automatically get added to the comments section of the article on Paragraph.
You also have other options like using Superfluid for streaming payments or creating a referral program with Sharemint.
I haven’t seen much composability with Mirror articles, but it’s very possible they exist and I’m just not aware of them (share them with me!).
Some Random Things Before Finishing
Fees:
It’s free to publish on both Paragraph and Mirror.
Paragraph charges a 5% fee on recurring subscriptions and when an NFT is collected. For comparison, Substack charges 10% on subscriptions. Paragraph also charges $50 to connect a domain.
On Mirror, there are a few different types of fees but none for publishers. I think the main one is the 0.00069 ETH fee that collectors are charged for minting a Writing NFT.
Editors:
This is the first post that I’ll be publishing so I can’t comment much on either of their built-in editors. I played around with them both briefly and they seem standard enough.
Paragraph does have ChatGPT built into their editor as well.
Themes:
Paragraph has some basic themes you can use. Although, calling them themes is probably overselling it as it’s just changing the colors and fonts. But still, better than nothing.
Importing Subscribers and Content:
Paragraph lets you import subscribers by wallet address or email which makes switching from another platform much less of a burden.
Mirror lets you import an article from any linkable source (ie, Medium or a personal blog) by pasting a URL. That works nicely if you want to also publish something on Mirror that you publish elsewhere.
Communities and Categories:
Paragraph lets you subdivide your content into communities. This lets you charge separate subscriptions or token gate each community separately. They also let you tag posts with different categories which makes organizing content easier.
Paragraph Fits My Needs Better
Paragraph feels like a much better tool for my needs and it's not particularly close. I initially planned on publishing my first several articles on both Mirror and Paragraph to get a better feel for which I prefer, but I’m going to just go ahead with Paragraph.
The lack of monetization options for Mirror, as well as the inability to transfer an account to a new wallet, are dealbreakers. I would almost certainly choose something like Substack or Beehiv before Mirror.
The advantages that Mirror has aren’t in the areas that are important for me. But again, everybody is different, and some people will prefer Mirror.
Let me know what I’ve gotten wrong or overlooked. Give me a subscribe and share too. I’m going to be spending a ton of time looking at the intersection of crypto and media and writing about what I learn.