Before Ethereum was code, it was a piece of writing. A year prior to Ethereum’s launch in 2015, Vitalik Buterin published a whitepaper that laid out his vision for the project. Like Satoshi before him, Vitalik’s whitepaper served as a call to action that inspired a group of believers to help bring his ideas to fruition. This whitepaper has become an invaluable artifact — a foundational text with historical significance.

Over the last year, Mirror has built a space for web3 ideas to grow. Thousands of writers – including DAO operators, NFT projects, engineers, investors and protocol teams – have used Mirror to introduce their best ideas to the ecosystem. Their voices have made it a vibrant destination for web3 writing.

At Mirror, we believe the next big idea will be collected as a Writing NFT.

Starting today, you can:

• Create your first Writing NFT from your Dashboard
• Collect from a list of genesis entries curated by Mirror DAO
• Explore the top entries on the new leaderboard

Many of the ideas published on Mirror have become invaluable to their communities — just like Vitalik’s whitepaper. Starting today, we are empowering people to collect the most important writing they find on Mirror — to publicly signal support for those ideas and to find belonging in like-minded collector communities.

Mirror now allows you to mint your writing as a digital collectible and set a customizable supply and price for it. Writing NFTs are completely free for writers to create, and collection happens on an Ethereum L2 — making transactions inexpensive, fast, and environmentally friendly. And, like everything published on Mirror, Writing NFTs are decentralized and censorship-resistant.

For collectors, owning a Writing NFT confers a stake in the piece’s legacy and a place within the community that develops around it. Did someone announce a project that you want to see brought to life? Did a trend forecast spark your imagination or validate your own intuition? Is someone embarking on a research project that resonated with you?

Adding a Writing NFT to your collection is a way of capturing these special moments and rallying behind the potential of an idea. Imagine, for instance, having proof that you were one of the first 100 people to read the Ethereum whitepaper. It not only signals that you were an early adopter or superfan, but it also binds you with other collectors of that Writing NFT.

Many writers from our community have minted their first Writing NFT as part of today’s launch. For example, Chase Chapman minted Co-ownership as a web3 social primitive with a supply of 333 at 0.01 ETH each. If you have an Ethereum wallet, you can collect it right now. Once the supply is sold out on Mirror, collectors will be able to purchase Writing NFTs on secondary markets.

To complement the launch of Writing NFTs, we want to do all we can to boost great ideas. Over the past year, one of the most frequent requests from both writers and readers has been to improve the discovery of high-quality content published on Mirror. Today, we’re adding two new discovery surfaces: the global leaderboard and collector profile pages. You can use these to find and explore all of the Writing NFTs launching today.

The leaderboard will rank the most popular entries based on the amount of ETH raised and the number of collectors, exposing more writers – and their most resonant ideas – to a wider audience.

Collector profile pages allow community members to display the Writing NFTs they’ve curated on Mirror. It’s where readers might go to find new writing from trusted sources — the equivalent of perusing an esteemed friend’s bookshelf. In turn, they can build their own reputation as a collector.

But don’t just collect; create! Whether you’ve been sitting on a groundbreaking new whitepaper or you simply want to test out writing on Mirror, you can create your first Writing NFT today. All you have to do is connect your wallet and you’re ready to post, price, and mint your work.

If you want to own a part of Mirror history, you can collect this announcement as a Writing NFT below.

Now go create, collect and explore the best writing in web3. Follow @viamirror for more updates!