Over the last five years, the on-chain publishing landscape has changed dramatically. Platforms that helped define “web3 publishing” have merged, pivoted, or shut down, and new products are emerging with fresh ideas. In that context, we’re officially sunsetting this blog on Mirror and moving future publishing to Paragraph.

What changed in the ecosystem

• Mirror → Paragraph (May 2, 2024). Mirror was acquired by Paragraph as the teams set out to build a unified on-chain publishing suite. The Mirror team began focusing on a new social app (“Kiosk”) built on Farcaster.

• Mirror “legacy” features (January 31, 2024). Before the acquisition, Mirror marked several modules (like crowdfunds, Editions, and Splits) as “legacy.” Existing entries remain accessible on static pages, but active development shifted away from those features.

• Bonfire sunset (May 2, 2025). Bonfire announced that its creator-site platform would officially sunset on May 2, 2025.

• Decent.xyz. Decent used to be the go-to for a permissionless, cross-chain minting flow at hq.decent.xyz. Recently, that specific flow seems to have stopped working in practice based on tests. There hasn’t been a public shutdown announcement, and the dashboard/site are still live. This is a very unfortunate situation.

Luckily, Manifold.xyz is still functioning – however it seems to only really work well with Ethereum mints. Thirdweb.com, a newer full-suite creator/developer platform, has produced great results and we’ll be using it going forward — at least for now.

We’re moving to Paragraph

Paragraph is a good option for on-chain, journalism-style publishing right now but critically, our writing doesn’t “live on a platform” — it lives on-chain. That persists regardless of front-end changes.

What this means for you

• This Mirror blog will be archived. Existing posts and entries here will remain viewable.

• New home: We’re moving our ongoing work to https://paragraph.com/@audiblebooks.eth.

A new chapter: launching a French-language project for Togo

As part of the transition, we’re launching a new French-language project focused on resistance and civil society in Togo called “Crypto-monnaie Privée et la Résistance au Togo”.

https://paragraph.com/@audiblebooks.eth/cryptoresistance

Thank you for reading and see you on Paragraph: https://paragraph.com/@audiblebooks.eth.

This old saying seems to hold true for Web 3 discovery platforms. Oohlala, the joy of web3 music discovery was taken down in early 2024.

I discovered Oohlala in early 2023 when I was an active member of the MusicaW3 community. At the time, Oohlala was the platform that everyone was talking about in every X space, every day. During the summer of 2023, it was all the hype.

Sometime at the end of 2022, the term "Oohlala" started to come up during X-spaces, and I remember not knowing what “Oohlala” even was. I would have never thought of a web3 music aggregator. At one point, somebody posted the link.

I was immediately struck by the fine user Interface, the clarity of the design, the colours, and then there was the music.

But there was something else. It seemed a different mix of music. It had something to do with freedom of choice and discoverability. In the sense that Jack Dorsey and Lyn Alden discussed at Freedom Forum Oslo recently.

On Oohlala, it seemed as if the music had been freed from something, an algorithm maybe. It all seemed fresh. It was also the first time that I realized:

“Playlists are the new albums!”

I vividly remember listening to the Chaos Songs playlist, Avamarie's „Perfect Timing“, Alex Paul's „3 A M“ , Snoops new mix tape and many more on Oohlala, creating several different playlists for later discovery and rabbit whole fantasma.

Just in case you missed minting those songs, like me, you may find some on the opensea profile of changhwan.eth, Co-Founder of Oohlala, though these early web3 pioneers in music are, all sold out editions.

I remember clicking through with excitement, noticing that all of them were „Sold Out“ web3 hits - for a reason. This was not only web3, it was great music.

These moments, when one forgets time without even noticing. Moments that stand still in time – just listening to the magic of the music.

Like when I was 16 years old, I was spending hours listening to music, clicking, looking at different platforms, discovering artists, and following an artist's history to understand where it all came from. And then of course going deeper into the rabbit whole to understand, why they were even in Web3.

“The joy of music discovery”

Oohlala had given me something, that I had lost more than 30 years ago.

But even more, there was the joy of experiencing the music in community, web3 community.

On X Spaces, one would hear the community talk about the music and somtimes even listen to it. Those were incredible moments, when you listen to your now favorite music together with a community and many times the musicians themselves were in the X Space. This was the vibe.

I spend the spring of 2023 in those Web3 Music X spaces, with the community of MusicaW3 and on Oohlala.

Then it was my turn. I was called upon to help out with a crowdfund and the audiblebooks.eth project was incubated on Oohlala in May 2023.

This is all in the past now. For some reason it seems as long ago as when I would go to the record shops to discover new music 30 years ago. But this was 30 years ago, this was last year.

Time moves fast.

I have not lost all hope. I just don't think it will be the last instance of such a visionary idea This is not the last time we have had a web3 music aggregator. Just Oohlala set the standard. Oohlala was just so early and will be back someday, somehow.

Until then, I am forever grateful for bringing back for a short moment in time, the joy of music discovery. One can only be grateful to have witnessed this early era of web3 music discovery.

                                                                                                                        June 4, 2024