Blockchain Media Startup Civil Shuts, Staff to Join ConsenSys

Civil, a startup decentralizing journalism funding and vetting, has publicly announced the shut down of its operations.

The homepage of Civil’s website now features a message from Matthew Iles, CEO of the startup, which was posted on Tuesday.

“We built innovative technology, supported award-winning journalists, and inspired many people all over the world with our vision for a more participatory media landscape. But ultimately, we failed to sustain ourselves independently,” Iles wrote.

“This isn't the outcome we had envisioned, but nevertheless, we're proud of what we accomplished. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our passionate community.”

Harsh market or a faulty business model?

Founded in 2016, Civil was one of the first companies to bring blockchain technology into journalism. The startup was aiming to build a trustworthy newsroom by staking CVL tokens which can then be used to reward the journalists or even in the platform’s governance.

Though the company failed with its approach to the market for an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Initial Coin Offering (ICO) An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a kind of crypto token sale that is used as a method of fundraising, similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO), in which stocks are sold to raise money for a company.In order to launch an ICO, a company simply needs to create a website, issue a token, and set a time and date for the sale. Investors buy ICO tokens in exchange for another cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum; after a set amount of time, they receive the tokens they purchased in the sale.Acco An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a kind of crypto token sale that is used as a method of fundraising, similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO), in which stocks are sold to raise money for a company.In order to launch an ICO, a company simply needs to create a website, issue a token, and set a time and date for the sale. Investors buy ICO tokens in exchange for another cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum; after a set amount of time, they receive the tokens they purchased in the sale.Acco Read this Term), it raised $5 million from Consensys in 2017.

The startup was also working with Consensys for the development of products related to decentralized identity in the media and advertising space, “which attracted enterprise interest for use cases such as trackable content licensing and transparent ad decisioning.”

The blog post also detailed that Civil’s team will join Consensys and continue developing decentralized identity software for Ethereum Ethereum Ethereum is an open source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract functionality. Created in 2014, Ethereum now stands as the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap at the time of writing.As a decentralized cryptocurrency network and software platform, Ethereum represents the most prominent altcoin. Ethereum also enables the creation Distributed Applications, or dapps. Understanding EthereumEthereum boasts its own programming language, Ethereum is an open source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract functionality. Created in 2014, Ethereum now stands as the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap at the time of writing.As a decentralized cryptocurrency network and software platform, Ethereum represents the most prominent altcoin. Ethereum also enables the creation Distributed Applications, or dapps. Understanding EthereumEthereum boasts its own programming language, Read this Term.

“The Civil Registry, Civil tokens, and other work are open-source and operational, but there will be no further active development or management on our part,” Iles noted. “The Civil Foundation's future is uncertain, but it is effectively in hibernation for now.”

“Our grand experiment did not achieve its mission, but we did succeed in bringing many people together around something radically different and in service of something deeply important.”