When I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013, I was using Tumblr. I had already been using Tumblr to share random stuff, and so when I decided to venture into longer-form writing, I just adapted what I had already been using. Here's what I consider to be my first real blog post, which was over 11 years ago.
But then Tumblr got sold to Yahoo (and became generally less popular) and it started to feel like the wrong place for me to be writing about city building. So I packed up and moved over to Wordpress. Here's my last post on Tumblr, which was some 4 years ago.
Wordpress has been working out just fine for me, but the world is changing and the internet is starting to move from web2 to web3 platforms. So this week, I made the decision to once again pack up and move -- this time to Paragraph.xyz. I moved over all of my old posts, my email subscribers, and my domain (brandondonnelly.com).
A lot of you may not notice much of a difference. If you type in my domain, you'll find all of my old posts. And all new posts will continue to show up in your inbox every day (I don't think I can do a weekly digest with Paragraph, which was an option I had with Wordpress + Mailchimp). The important part, though, is that the backend is now completely different.
All of my posts are now stored on a blockchain called Arweave, which is a permanent and fully decentralized protocol. Meaning, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, all of my writing would still live on forever, even if Paragraph goes bankrupt and shuts down. It is now also possible for readers to "collect" my posts just as they would an NFT.
I don't know how many people will actually do this and what utility it will serve today, but I think all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm a firm believer in crypto and blockchain technologies, and so it was time to walk the talk with my daily blog for city builders. Change is good. Welcome to brandondonnelly.com 3.0.
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.
