View Web3 ownership balance from Paragraph

Original author: 0xAntidote.eth

Compiled by: Zen, PANews

Paragraph, which once acquired Mirror, a well-known content platform for Web3, has brought some changes. One of the unreviewed points is that it has removed the ability to customize CSS design blogs. The Paragraph team said that only a few creators are using this feature, and I happen to be one of them. I have spent a lot of time carefully designing brand vision to give my blog a unique style. But this update completely ruined those efforts – custom fonts and background colors were removed, causing the overall design of the blog to become chaotic.

Although I have plans to continue publishing content on Paragraph and expand my readership, the current blog is not large and Paragraph will not lose users because of my departure. Each product team has limited resources, sometimes it is a problem of funding, sometimes it is a limited energy of developers, and sometimes it is a different priority for product decisions. Therefore, it is impossible to meet the needs of everyone.

However, I would like to add that the Paragraph team has always been very friendly to me. They selected my articles as "Weekly Selection" twice, and listened carefully to my feedback and gave professional explanations during communication.

Although I understand their decision, I think the way of thinking behind this decision is to imitate the existing Web2 content publishing platform - to enhance the control of the centralized distribution platform by standardizing the appearance of content. I still wish the Paragraph team all the best, but for me, the current Paragraph can no longer solve a core issue worth solving, so I decided to leave.

Paragraph 's Value Proposition

Judging from the official introduction, Paragraph’s core value proposition mainly revolves around “ content ownership .”

In short, Paragraph is a blog/newsletter platform based on encryption technology. Articles are stored on Arweave and can be sold as digital collections, allowing creators to monetize directly through content. In theory, this model can enhance the creator's ownership of his content.

However, after careful consideration, I think creating content on Paragraph does not mean that you really have it.

What is true "ownership"?

"Ownership" has always been an important concept in Web3 narrative. One of the origin stories of Ethereum is that Vitalik questioned the ownership of digital assets: What happens to your game props if the game developer shuts down the server?

This thinking gave birth to Ethereum and subsequent smart contract platforms, and promoted the evolution of the concept of "ownership". Today, blockchain technology allows almost all types of assets to be "owned".

But the essence of ownership is not just about owning something, it also involves a more complex level.

In a multi-person world, ownership must have four key elements:

1. Possession: Are you recognized as the owner of the asset?
2. Monetization: Can you sell the asset or charge non-owners?
3. Appearance: Does the asset display to the outside world meet your expectations?
4. Distribution: Can your assets be widely disseminated so that more people can recognize your ownership?

If any of these four aspects is problematic, real ownership cannot be established.

Paragraph 's flaws at ownership level

Blockchain improves many aspects of ownership through decentralized ledgers and encryption technologies. But if certain key links fail, ownership may still be eroded. For example:

• If everyone mistakenly thinks that what you have is something else, are you still the real owner?
• If your videos can only be presented in tan filters (because YouTube or your network provider has forced them to be added), is this your content?

This is exactly what Paragraph is currently in – it can change the visual presentation of a blog at will, and there is nothing the creators can do about it.

As can be seen from the above figure, Paragraph has improved its ownership and monetization, but has made limited contributions to appearance and distribution, and may even be negative.

Compromise and trade-offs in ownership

Of course, perfect ownership is an ideal state that may never be fully realized. However, we can measure whether we are moving towards this ideal. I think we have generally been gradually approaching this ideal over the past decade. Blockchain plays a role in this, but other technological advancements are equally important, such as decentralized energy production (mostly renewable energy) or Starlink ( which provides high-speed internet access worldwide ) .

However, in the current state, everything is more or less a compromise. The question is, in what aspects are you willing to compromise on the four aspects of ownership—possession, monetization, Appearance and Distribution?

Different assets and platforms have different ways of compromise.

For example, for some assets, such as Memecoins, teams are often willing to sacrifice their “appearance” and “distribution” autonomy and use X (former Twitter) and Discord to promote their projects in exchange for greater market coverage . These projects are willing to make such compromises because these traditional social media platforms have a huge audience base, and even if they have limited content, they still bring much more coverage than Farcaster or Lens. Small open platform. Memecoin’s growth into a multi-billion dollar industry itself proves that this compromise is effective in reality.

However, for media content, the situation is different. X will restrict link distribution to external media platforms, such as Substack. Writing memecoin related content is content that expands TAM (total available market) for X, while content linked to external media platforms is content that shrinks TAM. This is also a problem facing many Web3 media platforms - their value gains will only appear after reaching a certain scale. Before that, for many digital asset creators, they sacrifice ownership compared to the ideal state of ownership. Some aspects may be more economical in exchange for better distribution results.

This is particularly evident on Web3 media platforms like Paragraph. They do not fully optimize possession, monetization, appearance and distribution, leaving them in an awkward middle ground: they do not provide enough additional ownership control to allow creators to sacrifice distribution advantages to use it.

What alternatives are there?

So, where will my future content be published? I think there are several possible paths that can be more in line with my ownership philosophy.

1. Turning to other writing platforms such as Medium, Mirror, Substack or Ghost has its own advantages and disadvantages, but their compromises have not been essentially improved compared to Paragraph. In the past, it is more like lateral movement than a fundamental optimization.
2. Distribute on X and/or Farcaster and host content elsewhere This means splitting different aspects of ownership across multiple platforms. A possible best solution is to publish content on X/Farcaster first to ensure better distribution results; then archive articles on a blog that can customize CSS to ensure the appearance and display quality of the content.
3. Continue to use Paragraph, and look forward to it improving product positioning. This may be a feasible solution, but if you need to re-adjust the appearance of the content in the future, it will add a lot of work. So, I will keep the Paragraph blog at the moment, but not as a primary release channel unless there is substantial improvement in the product.

At present, I prefer the second option.

Farcaster in particular provides a nice balance between different aspects of ownership. Additionally, Frames could perhaps be a solution that allows long-form content to be published and complete control over the appearance and monetization.