Deep Participant Review: What pitfalls has Mirror encountered in the past two years?

1. The Debate Over Mirror's Curation Direction

Previously, Mirror conducted internal research, and everyone evaluated the following directions:

Recommendation algorithms;
Professional curation teams;
Mirror DAO doing curation;
Web3 allowing everyone to participate in voting for curation;

At the beginning of 2021, when Mirror was cold-started, curation adopted the (WRITE Race, which is option 4 (Web3 allowing everyone to participate in voting). In August 2021, a (WRITE airdrop was conducted for participants. In October, the $WRITE Race voting was terminated.

The termination of the $WRITE Race voting was mainly due to the following reasons:

Bribery and witch hunts were quite serious;
The Mirror team, due to compliance issues in the U.S., was always reluctant to touch the (WRITE token economic model. However, to incentivize people to vote, they couldn't avoid (WRITE.

At the end of 2021, option 3 (Mirror DAO doing curation) was activated, with co-founder Graeme Boy fully supporting it, and Rafa founding Mirror DAO to lead this effort. After six months of experimentation, the results were mediocre; the hundreds of big V members within Mirror DAO had no time to vote for curation. Ultimately, it devolved into a small circle curation, reverting to option 2 (professional curation teams).

In 2022, the two co-founders Graeme Boy and Denis Nazarov had significant disagreements over the curation direction.

For example, on the day writing NFT was officially released, Denis Nazarov tweeted an introduction. I replied, saying, "Based on writing NFT, we can finally restart voting for curation on Twitter." Denis Nazarov liked it, but Graeme Boy opposed it. Denis Nazarov and Graeme Boy made several comments under this tweet, which they later deleted.

With Graeme Boy's departure, Denis Nazarov continued to push for writing NFT, becoming the main avenue for curation in Mirror.

2. Product or Protocol

Under Graeme Boy's leadership, the Mirror development team aimed to create a protocol rather than a product, ideally having the front end developed by third parties in the ecosystem. The Mirror front end was terribly inadequate, lacking some basic functionalities and obvious bugs that the development team would not address for months. While everyone complained about the front-end experience, the development team, as one of the earliest supporters on the OP layer2, was enthusiastic about launching various NFT experimental projects, resulting in today's writing NFT.

Patrick, a core developer at Mirror, wrote an article titled "Thoughts on DAO Tooling," mainly discussing how successful DAO tools ultimately become protocols, which sparked some discussion. After the controversy, Patrick also left Mirror.

Creating a protocol requires an ecosystem. However, developers participating in the Mirror ecosystem received no compensation; many even paid out of pocket for server costs, while Mirror earned a 2.5% on-chain commission. The Mirror DAO treasury had nearly a million dollars (from the 2.5% on-chain commission revenue from Mirror products), with plans to subsidize Mirror ecosystem developers, but in reality, not a single cent was paid out. I asked Rafa at the time whether this was due to concerns about U.S. compliance issues (as this money is considered income for a U.S. company), and he did not deny it.

Today, under Denis Nazarov's leadership, Mirror seems to be returning to product development.

3. The Pitfalls of Mass Adoption

At the end of 2021, Mirror recruited Veronica Saron, the former Marketing Leader of Pokémon Go, to build a team aimed at helping Mirror break out and attempt mass adoption.

Veronica Saron eventually left in disappointment, and I was involved in this part of the work, feeling quite battered. Mirror neither solved high barriers like wallets nor could compete with Substack/Medium in terms of profitability, and the front-end editing and usage experience was quite user-unfriendly. Who besides Web3 natives would use it?

The key issue is that Mirror did not invest resources to address these problems throughout 2022. Mass adoption cannot be achieved merely through high marketing investments.

4. The Core Team's Reluctance to Address Token Economic Models

The core team at Mirror was particularly sensitive to U.S. compliance issues. There has been extensive discussion and disputes on this topic, which I will not elaborate on.

On April 3, 2022, I wrote an article titled "Thoughts on Mirror DAO," outlining the above issues and my thoughts on potential solutions, which I sent to Rafa. At that time, the core Mirror team gathered in New York for a closed-door discussion, and Rafa even traveled from Germany to New York despite the pandemic. That day, Rafa approached me and asked if I would be willing to share this article at the closed-door meeting, as these were the topics they were continuously debating.

As a serial entrepreneur myself, I understand how challenging it is to start a business, especially in Web3, where various ideals clash with reality. From Mirror's directional choices, I personally support Denis Nazarov. I also respect Graeme Boy and Rafa, who have exited; they are truly idealistic individuals.

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