Web3dom Season One: A Reflective Milestone

Publishing one article a week for three years might not be something to boast about, especially when many seasoned writers and artists maintain their daily routines for decades. However, sticking to it is still worth a little self-reward. And the reward is... to keep writing! 🥲

Over the past year, excluding retrospectives and event notifications, I published 55 articles. These, as usual, cover Information Freedom (23 articles), Financial Freedom (18), Democracy (9), and Uncle’s Diary (5).

At the end of this post, I have listed all 55 English articles from this season for those who might want to catch up or revisit. I've marked the most popular ones with a 🔥 and my personal favorites, often the overlooked gems, with a 🌈. Although I'd like to select more, I've limited myself to just one per category. If you disagree with my choices, feel free to leave a comment.

I'm often worried that I write too much about my daily life, veering off the "web3dom" topic. However, after checking, I found that my life diary accounts for less than 10% of the content, thanks to the "nano diary" strategy—brief personal notes placed at the end of each weekly update in the "p.s." section to reduce the impact of personal ramblings on the newsletter.

Besides categorizing by "Three Freedoms", the articles can be divided into various series, including book preservation (10.5 articles), Bitcoin (8), book and film reviews (5.5), LikeCoin (5), product reviews (4), and information security (4).

Thanks to the advent of AI, the newsletter has been available in English under the name web3dom – of web3 and freedom. The latest issue is last week’s #54. Over the year, web3dom accumulated 135 free subscribers. The response has been modest, but I’ve been managing it passively without actively promoting it.

Another experiment this season was switching platforms. Over the past month, emails have been sent via Paragraph. The migration had some errors, and there are still some bugs to fix, but the platform's functionality is promising. After moving to Paragraph, the Chinese and English newsletters were combined. Subscribers continue to receive the language they were subscribed to on Substack but can change their preferences or opt for both languages.

Subscription and Community Support

As of today, my newsletters have over 21,400 free subscribers across both languages, with an open rate slightly dropping to about 31% after the platform switch. The peak number of paid subscribers was 168, but it has recently dropped to 154, all from the Chinese version, contributing approximately $8,660 annually. Previously, I used this income to support my writing and reporting. However, with the DHK dao maturing, starting in the fourth season, I will transfer all the income directly to a multi-signature wallet managed by community members.

I lead a simple life, and any surplus I have is invested back into civil society. So, there’s no need to feel sorry for me. Instead, since the subscription income is used for the community, we should support it even more. I should adopt the same mindset: since it’s not for me, I need to move away from a passive approach, actively promote paid subscriptions, and encourage more people to become "daoists".