Can’t stop, won’t stop, airdrop
TLDR; We're airdropping 302 $WRITE tokens to active contributors on Mirror. The $WRITE token is solely used to register for Mirror and members will need 1 full token to register. If you receive a share of the $WRITE drop, we encourage you to send them to new members who you think would be valuable contributors.
As of August 1, 2021, there are roughly 200 people on Mirror. On one hand, that number feels surprisingly small, given how much noise Mirror has managed to make in the past six months and how much innovation has emerged out of the community. On the other hand, it feels like a pretty sizable number, given how much Mirror has maintained a tight-knit sense of family.
With the exception of the first twenty users - who we onboarded manually - each member has been initiated onto the platform through our weekly $WRITE Race, a showdown between aspiring members where voting power is in the hands of the community. Winning the $WRITE Race grants users one $WRITE token, the cost of registering a publication on Mirror and gaining access to its crypto-native creative suite. After 25 rounds and 1.6M total votes, the $WRITE Race has attracted an incredible batch of talent and perspective, while elevating the concept of growth to community engagement. It ensured a quality foundation of creators whose use of our tools confounded us each week, including the recent 1,036 ETH crowdfund ($2M at the time) of the Ethereum documentary.
Moving forward, we feel there are two equally important next steps: approach growth more exponentially and reward our most engaged community members. And why not do both with a single solution?
The $WRITE Race is awesome and we’re going to keep it up, but when it comes to growth and democratic decision making, it still poses a couple issues. Despite the democratic process, the $WRITE Race was not without a dose of nepotism. Participants who had connections to Mirror members and/or a larger Twitter following usually topped the charts each week. Secondly, at the rate of ten new members a week that the race permitted, it would take almost two years for Mirror to reach 1000 members.
The Airdrop
So we’ve got a really solid foundation. The output of our community is evidence of that, to say the least. Moving forward, we feel there are two equally important next steps: approach growth more exponentially and reward our most engaged community members. And why not do both with a single solution?
We’ve got 300 $WRITE tokens we’re going to airdrop to the community, but we want to distribute them thoughtfully. According to a proposal by Andrew Hong, a data scientist and generous Mirror community member, we’ve devised a pretty cool algorithm that will determine who the tokens are awarded to. Because all participation on crypto-native platforms like Mirror is permanently, transparently and immutably recorded on-chain, we had a lot of factors to work with.
Andrew’s algorithm accounts for:
- $WRITE Race participation
- Publishing frequency
- Creation of crowdfunds, auctions and editions
- Backing of projects
You can view which Mirror members made out big this round in the leaderboard above. If you do receive a share of the $WRITE drop, we encourage you to send them to new members who you think would be valuable contributors.
What does the Airdrop accomplish?
- Democratized onboarding. It further democratizes the selection process and broadens the criteria for entry. Beyond the weekly $WRITE Race, the expansion of the Mirror community will be determined by those who have been most integral in shaping it thus far.
- Scales up membership. While $WRITE Race is capped at ten users per week, the airdrop can in theory be scaled exponentially, by adjusting the amount of tokens airdropped or the frequency of the airdrop.
- Participation over popularity. One criticism of the $WRITE Race has dubbed it a popularity contest. While awarding contestants with dense social graphs was integral to spreading the word about Mirror in the early days—as members with large followings evangelized the project to their built-in audience—it’s not the ethos we want to uphold in the long term. With the airdrop, constructive participation is rewarded instead.
- Social graph originality. If you zoom far enough out, Mirror is predominantly made up of a close-knit social graph, but we hope rewarding members on an individual basis will help us to branch out to more diverse social clusters.
This feels like an appropriate time and place to acknowledge the first 200 members, beyond the upcoming airdrop. We’re gearing up for a major growth spurt, and we’d like to take a moment to cherish the scale within which we’ve been operating and innovating. We hope it’s been as exciting for you as it has been for us. We know we have you to thank for that.
Let’s keep the party going.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to send exactly 1 $WRITE token for someone to onboard?
Accounts need 1 $WRITE to onboard but they can receive smaller amounts from multiple people or one full token from one person. As long as you have a balance of one $WRITE token in your wallet you will be able to register.
Is there a certain date I need to claim by?
Nope. You can claim whenever you'd like.
How does this impact Write Race?
Write Race will continue run every week at 12pm PST. The voting algorithm will regain the same as well. Mirror members initially receive 1,000 votes and each week they vote they get 10 more votes. Non-members receive 10 votes and receive 10 votes each week they vote.