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The founder of Civic, Vinny Lingham, has said that now that the technology is in motion, his main focus is on getting users. And he’s planning on spending $43 million in total to make that happen.
Civic (CVC) is a blockchain product that focuses on secure identity verification. Yet despite having strong developmental progress and an actual product, they have been struggling to make users. A network of users is naturally integral to the long-term success of the Civic product. As per their statement, Civic is planning on allocating a third of its total 1 billion supply towards paying for the costs of its services. The purposes of these funds is to drive network adoption.
The rationale is simple: for every user that is verified on Civic, the process becomes a little bit easier. It becomes more attractive for the next company to use, so said Lingham.
Lingham told Coindesk as per their report today that: “Paypal got it right with the whole $10 free if you invite a friend and it nearly bankrupted the company. They managed to crack the chicken and egg problem doing it that way.” Indeed, Cash App has been working under a similar model and it seems to have worked. This is simply because more users, regardless of how you get them, is always better and brings much-needed exposure.
As of now, Civic is the only real blockchain system that has a working product on KYC procedures. It is paid for using CVC tokens which were created by the Civic project itself. However, this all begs the question: why is Civic deciding to do this now?
The answer is really quite simple. As of now, Civic has been verifying identities on a small scale. One of their biggest and well-known customers is Annheiser-Busch. They also boasts many partnerships within the crypto space itself such as Shapeshift, 0x, and the Chamber of Digital Commerce. However, these are simply not enough.
As Lingam has commented: “We’re at the point now where the product is [ready]… we’ve tested it. A hundred companies have signed up to use it and it’s working.” Yet, the missing link is adoption and a wide user base. All of these small-scale examples compare nothing to the real-world of identity verification. They’ve even gone as far as to acquire the domain for identity.com which will likely serve as a hub between customers and companies for KYC-related services.
Therefore, as is the key for many in the crypto space, the goal is one of disruption. With $43 million in the wings to boost user numbers, it seems that Civic has its sights on a proper target. Whether or not Lingam will be able to accrue those numbers in time and make the mark that the company wants, that’s another question entirely.