The Advanced Member’s Guide to Buying Civil Tokens

Civil is a community-run platform for independent journalism. We are a growing network of news organizations and supporters committed to a free press, civil discourse and public accountability. To become a voting member within our community, you need to purchase Civil tokens. If this is unfamiliar to you, learn more about Civil memberships here.

The Advanced Member’s Guide to Buying Civil Tokens

The Civil Registry is the heart of the Civil platform. This is where all newsroom records are maintained, where community debate and votes occur, and where members can earn rewards for participating. Fundamentally, the growth of newsrooms, functionality and activity on the Civil Registry will drive the community’s usage of Civil tokens.

We believe Civil newsrooms signal their trustworthiness when they stake Civil tokens to pledge their commitment to the journalistic ethics outlined in the Civil Constitution. Community members can discover and interact with newsrooms once they join Civil, and products built on the Civil platform will only be accessible to Civil newsrooms. As Civil newsrooms continue to benefit from the rich functionality on the platform, as well as access to the community, , we hope additional newsrooms globally will join the Civil Registry. As part of our governance mechanism, Civil newsrooms have to stake Civil tokens in order to maintain their listing on the Civil Registry, which we believe creates the right incentives to participate in the network.

Similar to newsrooms, demand to become a Civil member will increase as the benefits increase in value. At launch, this includes the ability to vote, propose, challenge and appeal community decisions as well as earn rewards for participating. Especially as more newsrooms join the Civil Registry, the demand to participate in the community governance should also increase.

Thus, the value of the Civil Registry is reflected in the value of each Civil token, which means newsrooms and members are incentivized to support trustworthy newsrooms and remove unethical newsrooms in order to protect the value of the Civil Registry and tokens overall. This incentive system only works if tokens are held by newsrooms and members who will use them for their intended purpose, so we have put in place some controls to ensure healthy growth free from speculators.

But first, let’s walk through the basics of the Civil token economy.

Civil Token Supply

The Civil Media Company invented and built the Civil Registry as well as Civil tokens, but the total token supply will actually be somewhat distributed from the start. There will only ever be 100MM Civil tokens in existence (thanks, blockchain!), of which 34MM will be sold to members where 100% of net contributions will fund the Civil Foundation.

Buying and selling Civil tokens

This is NOT just another token sale. Instead of a fixed time period, Civil tokens will be offered to prospective members through a continuous model until all 34MM are sold. The Civil Media Company will sell these tokens via a transparent, fixed and linear pricing formula, but other members may also sell their tokens on the open market at whatever price they want barring certain restrictions. (More details below.)

Pricing Civil tokens sold by The Civil Media Company

Prospective members who wish to direct their contribution to the Civil Foundation will need to purchase tokens from The Civil Media Company. It is possible to buy from others in the network (potentially at a lower price), but these funds will not go to the Civil Foundation.

The Civil Media Company will sell 34 million tokens using a fixed, transparent and linear slope. The maximum contribution total once all tokens are sold is $19,400,000. We will start selling tokens at $0.20 per CVL, and they will become more expensive for every token we sell until the last one goes for $0.94.

We can derive the price slope using these three parameters: total revenue ($19.4MM), total supply (34MM), and starting price ($0.20).

If we plot these on a chart, we can see that the ‘token price’ (y-axis) increases as the ‘token sold’ (x-axis) increases, until the last token is sold. The area under this line equals the total contributions at every point along the way. To calculate the price to buy N tokens, we calculate the area from x1 to x2 , where x1 is the tokens already sold, and x2 is (x1 + N).

Civil Tokens Are a Consumer Token

Civil tokens are a consumer software product that provide the means to participate in and govern the Civil platform. However, they do not confer rights of any kind with respect to The Civil Media Company, the Civil Foundation or any of their affiliates, or their intellectual property or any other assets. In other words, they are NOT a security. Instead, Civil tokens unlock how our platform can be governed directly by journalists and the public they serve.

Therefore, we believe it is critical to ensure that only people who believe in and intend to contribute to Civil’s mission possess Civil tokens. Pure speculation can affect the price of CVL in ways unrelated to the network activity itself, so we are enacting a few restrictions that prevent members from selling tokens under certain conditions. We believe this will drastically reduce or eliminate altogether unwanted secondary market activity. Our intention is to lift these restrictions after three months provided the network is sufficiently decentralized, though The Civil Media Company retains the right to extend this time period at its own discretion.

So what are the Civil token restrictions?

• Everybody is allowed to receive tokens. There are only restrictions on SENDING tokens, but never on RECEIVING.
• All token holders must complete the “Civil Tutorial” before they can do anything with their tokens. This ensures that you know how to safely hold your cryptocurrency and that you intend to use Civil tokes for their intended purpose.
• After you complete the tutorial, you can interact with “core” Civil Smart Contracts, such as the Civil Registry (the discovery hub for community-approved Civil newsrooms), and you are allowed to send Civil tokens to newsrooms on the Civil Registry. However, your account is not yet “unlocked” until you become an active participant in the Civil economy, so you cannot sell or transfer your Civil tokens to anyone else. For more information on how to unlock your tokens, read more here.
• After your account is unlocked, you are allowed to freely transfer or sell your Civil tokens.

Embarking on the decentralized future of journalism together

We want the Civil network to grow in a healthy and organic way — governed by the community and free from speculators. Network demand will introduce more tokens into circulation in a transparent, linear fashion until we sell out. The restrictions will ensure members understand what Civil tokens are and how to use them, as well as minimize speculators.

We know for most people there are a lot of new concepts (Ethereum! Seed phrases! Gas prices, oh my!). But we’re all in this together, and the Civil team and our partners are here to help you every step of the way. Need help installing Metamask? Email us. Don’t know how to send ETH to your wallet? Visit our help center. Got something nice to say? Tweet at us. ✌