Hey, so today I decided to do a deep dive into the Mirror.xyz platform, to understand how it works, and why it’s really cool to use this as a publishing platform.
Mirror is a web3 native writing platform that works just like a regular publishing platform ex: Medium but with the added advantages offered by Web3 and blockchain technology.
You as a writer own your posts - your posts don’t reside on Mirror.xyz’s server, so you don’t have to worry about stuff like censorship or losing your data cause of some server issue. This is done by using a decentralized file storage protocol called Arweave that guarantees data persistency for an upfront low cost.
Mirror doesn’t own the writer’s domain. Here, you can see that the domain of each writer’s website looks like
https://www.mirror.xyz/bharatharaj.eth. Here, after mirror.xyz/ it uses the wallet address of the writer to deliver the data.Now, instead of putting my ENS domain, I can also fetch this website directly using my wallet address too ! Like
https://www.mirror.xyz/0xE6D5514b8De7ef9E5F5c4cc2E8cA0207129DEB65which is what my wallet address is. This just adds a web3 flavor to the website, where all your data of the posts are fetched straight using your wallet address - no need any login / passwords, simply connect wallet and you’re good to go !Writing on this platform does not cost you anything - and thanks to Optimism, a layer-2 solution that this platform uses, network fees are really low for interactions.
As a reader, you don’t have to trust the Mirror platform that Mirror did not mess with the content you’re reading and did not manipulate it. Because each post is signed by the writer’s private key enabling us to verify that a particular post was genuine.
Build a community with your readers - Mirror lets readers mint your posts as a digital collectible and set a customisable supply and a price for it. Since these NFTs exist on a layer 2 i.e Optimism, transactions are really cheap and environmentally friendly.
By owning a NFT of a writer’s post, you get to have a stake in that post’s legacy.
You get to be a part of the community of people supporting the writer.
You get to support something you find interesting.
Its also a way of capturing special moments and rallying behind the potential of a new idea. Ex: Imagine being one of the first 100 people to read the Ethereum white-paper and you could prove it through the ownership of the NFT.
By purchasing someone else’s NFT, you now unlock a collector tab, where you can display the posts that you have collected kind of like a bookshelf, where you show your collections.
Splitting this deep dive into two parts - the second part is going to be more technical !
Update: Do check out part 2 after this → attaching the link
https://mirror.xyz/bharatharaj.eth/s074FGC1Zh4lP3xRXy9FBANwgMR2LNXCuuxBrR14ciU