Cancel the custom design feature from Paragraph and see the ownership balance of Web3

Original Title: "The flawed concept of ownership in Web3"

Original Author: 0xAntidote.eth

Compiled by: Zen, PANews

Recently, Paragraph, which acquired the well-known Web3 content platform Mirror, brought some changes in its latest update, one of which is the removal of the custom CSS design feature for blogs, a point that has not been widely discussed. The Paragraph team stated that only a few creators were using this feature, and I happened to be one of them. I had spent a lot of time carefully designing the brand visuals to give my blog a unique style. But this update completely undermined those efforts—custom fonts and background colors were removed, resulting in a chaotic overall design for the blog.

While I plan to continue publishing content on Paragraph and expanding my readership, the current scale of my blog is not large, and Paragraph will not lose users if I leave. Every product team's resources are limited; sometimes it's a funding issue, sometimes it's the limited energy of developers, and sometimes it's about differing priorities in product decisions. Therefore, it is impossible to meet everyone's needs.

However, I would like to add that the Paragraph team has always been very friendly to me. They have selected my articles as "Weekly Picks" twice and have listened to my feedback seriously, providing professional explanations during our communications.

Although I understand their decision, I believe that the mindset behind this decision is mimicking existing Web2 content publishing platforms—enhancing the control of centralized distribution platforms by standardizing the appearance of content. I still wish the Paragraph team all the best, but for me, the current Paragraph cannot address a core issue worth solving, so I have decided to leave.

Value Proposition of Paragraph

From the official introduction, Paragraph's core value proposition mainly revolves around "content ownership."

In short, Paragraph is a blog/newsletter platform based on cryptographic technology. Articles are stored on Arweave and can be sold as digital collectibles, allowing creators to monetize their content directly. Theoretically, this model enhances creators' ownership of their content.

However, upon careful consideration, I believe that creating content on Paragraph does not mean you truly own it.

What is True "Ownership"?

"Ownership" has always been an important concept in the Web3 narrative. One of the origin stories of Ethereum is Vitalik questioning the ownership of digital assets: What happens to your in-game items if the game developers shut down the servers?

This line of thought gave rise to Ethereum and subsequent smart contract platforms, driving 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 possessing something; it involves more complex layers.

In a world of multi-user interaction, 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 for it?
3. Appearance: Does the way the asset is presented to the outside world meet your expectations?
4. Distribution: Can your asset be widely disseminated, allowing more people to recognize your ownership?

If any of these four aspects encounter issues, true ownership cannot be established.

Deficiencies of Paragraph in Terms of Ownership

Blockchain improves many aspects of ownership through decentralized ledgers and cryptographic technology. However, if certain key links fail, ownership can still be eroded. For example:

• If everyone mistakenly believes you own something else, are you still the true owner?
• If your video can only be presented with a brown filter (because YouTube or your internet provider enforced the filter), is it still your content?

This is precisely the situation Paragraph is currently in—it can arbitrarily change the visual presentation of blogs, leaving creators powerless.

As seen in the image above, Paragraph has made improvements in possession and monetization aspects of ownership, but its contributions in appearance and distribution are limited, and may even be negative.

Compromises and Trade-offs of 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 believe that over the past decade, we have generally been gradually approaching this ideal. Blockchain has played a role in this, but other technological advancements are equally important, such as decentralized energy production (mainly renewable energy) or Starlink (which provides high-speed internet access globally).

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

Different assets and platforms have different ways of compromising.

For example, for certain assets, like memecoins, teams are often willing to sacrifice "appearance" and "distribution" autonomy, using X (formerly Twitter) and Discord to promote their projects in exchange for greater market coverage. These projects are willing to make such compromises because the audience base of these traditional social media platforms is enormous; even if they impose restrictions on content, the coverage they provide far exceeds that of smaller open platforms like Farcaster or Lens, which focus more on ownership. The development of memecoins into a multi-billion dollar industry itself proves that such compromises are effective in reality.

However, the situation is different for media content. X restricts the distribution of links to external media platforms, such as Substack. Writing content related to memecoins is seen as content that expands the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for X, while linking to external media platforms is viewed as content that contracts the TAM. This is also a problem many Web3 media platforms face—they only realize their value gains after reaching a certain scale, and before that, for many digital asset creators, sacrificing certain aspects of ownership for better distribution may be more economically sensible than adhering to the ideal state of ownership.

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

What Are the Alternatives?

So, where will I publish my future content? I believe there are several possible paths that may align better with my ownership philosophy.

1. Turn to other writing platforms, such as Medium, Mirror, Substack, or Ghost. Each of these platforms has its pros and cons, but their compromise solutions do not fundamentally improve upon Paragraph. Switching would be more like a lateral movement rather than a fundamental optimization.
2. Distribute on X and/or Farcaster while hosting content elsewhere. This means splitting different aspects of ownership across multiple platforms. One possible best solution is to first publish content on X/Farcaster to ensure better distribution; then archive articles on a blog that allows custom CSS to ensure the quality of content appearance and presentation.
3. Continue using Paragraph, hoping it improves its product positioning. This might be a feasible option, but if I need to readjust the appearance of the content in the future, it will add a lot of extra workload. Therefore, I will keep my Paragraph blog for now but will not use it as my primary publishing channel unless there are substantial improvements to the product.

Currently, I lean towards the second option.

In particular, Farcaster provides a nice balance between different aspects of ownership. Additionally, Frames may become a solution that allows for the publication of long-form content while maintaining complete control over appearance and monetization.