Civil
ConsenSys bought most of its token sale, and it still missed its minimum
An Ethereum-based marketplace where readers were to fund independent newsrooms with its CVL token, and newsrooms staked the token to join a self-governed registry held to a journalism-ethics constitution.
- Capital raised (announced)
- Estimated
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- CVL sold in the 2018 sale, then refunded
- Reported figures differ
Reports disagree on 2018 sale proceeds. Refunds were offered; the amount actually returned was not established.
- Member news organizations at closure
- Estimated
Poynter’s count of member organizations still publishing in the final week, June 2020; only the first 14 received grants.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| ConsenSys funding | 2017 |
| |
| CVL token sale (2018, refunded) | 2018 | ||
| CVL token sale (2019 relaunch) | 2019 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Iles | Unknown – Jun 2020 | Co-founder and COO, Mojito | Oct 2026 | |
| Matt Coolidge | — | Joined Chainlink | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
2016
Two shutdown reports give 2016; others date the launch to 2017.
25 October 2017
Civil set aside $1 million for a first group of newsrooms, the First Fleet, and named Popula as its first publication. It planned to launch the platform and token sale together in early 2018.
18 September 2018
Buying required identity verification and a quiz on cryptocurrency; one journalist counted 44 steps. Card and bank payments were allowed only late in the sale.
15 October 2018
Buyers could take an immediate refund, be refunded automatically by 29 October, or roll into a later sale. ConsenSys said it would fund the first newsrooms through the Civil Foundation meanwhile.
6 March 2019
Proceeds of the new sale went to the Civil Foundation. Iles said the 17-person company intended to start earning revenue that year by selling software to newsrooms.
January 2020
Direct financial support for member newsrooms had stopped earlier in 2020.
2 June 2020
"We developed compelling technology, but in the end, tried to do something that was not ready for prime time," Iles told Poynter.
How it ended
Ran out of money
ConsenSys, which had funded almost all of Civil, stopped doing so, and the company found no other backer. Chief executive Matthew Iles wrote that it had failed to sustain itself independently. The website was replaced by his farewell post, and the remaining staff, eight people, moved to ConsenSys to work on decentralized identity software. The registry and token contracts stayed open source but were no longer developed, the newsrooms that had joined carried on independently, and the Civil Foundation was left in what Iles called hibernation.
Still alive
Open spot
Civil is gone. Is your publishing platform still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
18 sources behind this page.
- 1Matthew Iles: speaker profile · ALSD (event speaker bio, undated)
- 2Matthew Iles: contributor page · Blockworks (contributor bio, undated)
- 3NFTs are the new cookies · Blockworks (opinion column by Matthew Iles) · Jan 2024
- 4ConsenSys-Backed Civil Tries Again on Newsroom Token Launch · CoinDesk · Mar 2019
- 5Media Startup Civil Shuts Down, Team Absorbed Into Decentralized ID Efforts at ConsenSys · CoinDesk · Jun 2020
- 6Media Startup Civil to Issue Refunds as $8 Million Token Sale Fails · CoinDesk · Oct 2018
- 7Civil's token sale fails to hit target. What now? · Columbia Journalism Review · Oct 2018
- 8Civil (CVL) Pulls Plug on ICO After Falling Short of $8 Million Softcap · CryptoSlate
- 9Blockchain journalism startup Civil is no more · Decrypt · Jun 2020
- 10Blockchain Media Startup Civil Shuts, Staff to Join ConsenSys · Finance Magnates
Show 8 moreShow fewer
- 11Latest posts by @mattcoolidge, including his 12 October 2020 post on joining Chainlink · Matt Coolidge on X (account id 17443018), retrieved via twitterapi.io · Oct 2020
- 12Matt Coolidge (@mattcoolidge) account record · Matt Coolidge on X (account id 17443018), retrieved via twitterapi.io
- 13Blockchain Publisher Platform Civil To Shut Down · MediaPost (Publishers Daily) · Jun 2020
- 14Civil, the blockchain-based journalism marketplace, is building its first batch of publications · Nieman Journalism Lab · Oct 2017
- 15Civil's token sale has failed. Now what? Refunds, for one thing — and then another sale · Nieman Journalism Lab · Oct 2018
- 16R.I.P. Civil — Lessons from a failed startup · Poynter · Jun 2020
- 17Civil Announces $5 Million In Funding From ConsenSys · PR Newswire (company release) · Oct 2017
- 18Search of @matthewiles and @mattcoolidge posts mentioning Civil, 2018 · X, retrieved via twitterapi.io
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.