One Big Backer Is Propping Up Media Startup Civil's Struggling ICO

The token sale for Civil, the ConsenSys-backed company putting journalism on the blockchain, has brought in $1.34 million toward its $8 million minimum, according to a transparency report released today by the company.

Last October, Civil announced that it had received $5 million in funding from ConsenSys, the ethereum-focused development studio.

The sale won't be finalized unless it reaches its "Soft cap" of $8 million by October 15.

The company has also designated a funding cap of $24 million.

In the report, Civil founder Matthew Iles said that the startup would push toward reaching the $8 million cap in spite of the progress thus far.

"We were founded to deliver a decentralized network for ethical journalism to the people, so nothing is more painful for our team than to witness how challenging it has been for motivated Civil supporters to wrestle with the user experience challenges involved with our unique consumer token product."

The company added that "The Civil Media Company did not and does not need the proceeds from this sale in order to continue operations."

"Another 1,671 individuals have committed another $798,503.71, but are either stuck somewhere in the process or simply haven't decided to fulfill their commitment yet," Civil added, noting that, all told, pledged contributions amounted to roughly $2.1 million.

The slow fundraising progress is a far cry from 2017, when other publishing projects, such as Brave's basic attention token raised $35 million in less than a minute.

"We actually believe in shipping product before asking customers to pay for something," Civil CEO Matthew Iles told CoinDesk in an interview in September.