The Waterline: How Civil Works

Civil has officially existed for more than a year (though the idea has been floating around my head for much, much longer). Our core team is now comprised of 11 people across three time zones and two continents. We’ve already signed more than two dozen Newsmakers across six Newsrooms (and counting). Our team is working around the clock to finish building Civil’s platform, which will connect readers and journalists directly with the Ethereum blockchain, and the new model it unlocks.

We embrace the challenge ahead, and are fueled by our universal passion for introducing a model that can help sustain journalism well into the future. One of the earliest challenges we’ll need to overcome in service of this larger goal is answering a single, key question:

How exactly does Civil work?

Unless you’re a blockchain enthusiast, it’s fair to assume that the idea of an “Ethereum-based, decentralized marketplace for sustainable journalism” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. For many, “blockchain” is still synonymous with “Bitcoin.” Some people still have a hard time distinguishing between the two, and don’t recognize that Bitcoin is just a single use case of blockchain technology. The latter has a much, much broader range of potential applications that go far beyond cryptocurrency. The more accurate parallel to blockchain is really the advent of the internet (if you haven’t already, take a minute to read Steven Johnson’s brilliant, relatable intro to blockchain and its long-term potential).

Blockchain unlocks important new features for journalism funding models (such as permanent archives). Knowledge of blockchain is not — and should not — be a prerequisite to accessing the news and staying informed on current affairs. For that reason, Newsrooms that run on Civil’s platform will be able to accept USD and other traditional currencies via conventional credit card payments, as well as cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and, of course, CVL (the utility token we’re developing). CVL tokens will play a vital role in the self-governance of Newsrooms and the platform as a whole, and we expect that many members of our community will elect to use them to participate in the governance of Civil’s platform from day one.

However, we don’t want this to be a limiting factor for those that just like great journalism. We fully expect a vastly larger readership to flock to our Newsrooms because of the tremendous journalism they offer — all without actively participating (or even being aware of) the underlying mechanisms enabled through blockchain.

Here’s how we envision our ecosystem will look:

We’ve found that the “waterline” concept is a helpful way to break down how our ecosystem will take shape as Civil grows. Readers and supporters, the largest contingent, will visit Civil solely to access and support good journalism. Our core community — those holding CVL tokens and shaping key community decisions (confirming or challenging a newsmaker or Newsroom application, fact checking, etc.) — will exist underneath the waterline and participate in the self-governance of the platform. Finally, a group of “creators” will exist at the core: community-approved journalists that create the stories that live on Civil Newsrooms, as well as developers that build new tools and experiences based on broad ecosystem demand.

Going Below Sea Level

In this way, our model isn’t dissimilar to Wikipedia’s, but with a crypto kick. Most of us go there for information on a given topic — say, Paraguay. We read it, we trust that it’s generally reliable — and we know there’s an underlying, massive community of editors and contributors that are ensuring the continued accuracy of the content and good governance of the encyclopedia. Many of us don’t know exactly how or why they operate as they do, but we know that the model works — and that the underlying mechanisms that power it are transparent for anybody that cares to dig deeper. Wikipedia has established an effective governance mechanism that enables a massive and crowd-operated information platform to work transparently, at scale.

This is also what we’re doing at Civil, but with a few additional wrinkles that capitalize on newer trends.

Our mission is journalism, plain and simple. Everything we do is in service of introducing a new, more sustainable model to support journalism. To do so, we need to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. If somebody wants to support the only independent local newsroom in Chicago, or the first (and only) publication focused on the growing cannabis industry, downloading a wallet and using a new cryptocurrency should not be a prerequisite to access for those not yet comfortable doing so. And it won’t be.

The CVL token does serve an incredibly important utility. It’s the mechanism by which our community will connect with the Ethereum blockchain, and the business benefits it unlocks for journalism: permanent archiving and an incentive-based system for self-governance. Each individual CVL transaction can modify the state of a smart contract stored on Ethereum’s distributed ledger (some can even spawn new contracts). Put simply, CVL tokens are necessary for this model to work. It allows us to economically incentivize actions that result in quality journalism in Civil’s marketplace, and to make it prohibitively difficult — and expensive — for bad actors and trolls to emerge.

Our goal is for Civil to be the first time that many people interact with a blockchain-based technology — most of whom may not even realize it initially. Civil, as it will exist above the waterline, is simply a marketplace for great journalism — the type that most people grew accustomed to during print newspapers’ heyday, and which is increasingly difficult to find today. That marketplace will be powered by an underlying community that will influence and inform decisions in a transparent, decentralized manner. This is what allows us to take the middleman (publishers, advertisers, etc.) out of the equation, and let journalists be accountable to their readers alone while maintaining complete editorial independence.

We’ll be publishing a lot more on how Civil is applying a token curated registry model to realize this vision. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback, questions and comments in our never-ending quest to deliver a journalism marketplace that will be equally exciting to smart contract engineers, your grandmother and everybody in between. And if your grandmother happens to be a smart contract engineer, we’d love to talk to her: we’re hiring!