This week, Mailchimp deplatformed some crypto media companies including Messari. This isn’t the first time they have done so; I recall this happening in 2017/2018 too.

Sam Richards used the term “rugged”, conveying the sense of being the victim of theft and betrayal. Messari and others trusted Mailchimp to host their subscription lists and provide a service, and when the platform unexpectedly turned on them it resulted in the loss of significant value.

A co-founder of Substack took the opportunity to welcome crypto writers to his platform. But it’s important to realize that there is no fundamental difference between Substack and Mailchimp in this regard. At the hint of issues with their partners (for example, Stripe payments) there is no guarantee that Substack would take your side over their partners. This lesson has been learned in crypto many times; when regulation is involved, only trustless decentralized protocols can keep their promises.

A trustless publishing platform is one that already mirrors your content on a decentralized file-storage system like Arweave. You shouldn’t have to hope that the platform stays favorable to your content. You should have the option to exit at any time because the data is simply not gated and owned by the platform.

Existing platforms – from Mailchimp to Discord – were not built for web3 and they have existing web2 users and partners that create an innovator’s dilemma. It’s not worth it for them to build web3 features like trustless publishing.

That’s why we built this as the foundation of Mirror.