Coil in Collaboration with Mozilla Launches $100 Million Fund for the Web

Coil in collaboration with Mozilla and Creative Commons has launched a $100 million Grant for the Web, an initiative to empower individuals creators and stimulate an alternative business model for online content.

Over five years, the program will donate $100 million to the projects, and global communities that contribute to open, accessible, and privacy-centric web monetization ecosystem.

This $100 million fund came via a grant from Ripple and in some cases, the projects will also use XRP to settle financial transactions, Stephan Thomas, founder and CEO of Coil and former Ripple CTO, told Fortune.

Exciting to see @Coil and @justmoon leading the charge on #WebMonetization by bringing content creators an alternative business model to ads. @Ripple is proud to support Grant for the Web in developing a new standard for content engagement. #XRP #Xpring @Interledger https://t.co/6IZ5dbHY5h

— Ethan Beard (@ethanbeard) September 16, 2019

The program will be awarding at least 50% of all grant — the amount will vary from small to large depending on the scope of the project — to proposed software and content projects that embrace ad-free business models, which will be chosen by an Advisory Council.

“In the current web ecosystem, big platforms and invasive, targeted advertising make the rules and the profit. Consumers lose out, too — they unwittingly relinquish reams of personal data when browsing content,” said Mark Surman, Mozilla’s executive director.

The idea here is to enable creators to be paid directly for their work, protect privacy, lower administrative costs, incentivize innovation on the web, and give creators and consumers the ability to use any currency.

“That’s the whole idea behind ‘surveillance capitalism.’ Our goal in joining Grant for the Web is to support a new vision of the future. One where creators and consumers can thrive,” he said.

Mozilla co-founder not a fan of the “XRP Grants”

With Coil and Mozilla working together, what’s Brendan Eich, the co-founder of Mozilla and the founder of Brave browser feel about this collaboration?

Not so good, apparently!

“This is all XRP grants, it sounds like. We can use them easily via BAT, and with privacy and anonymity by design. The governance FAQ answer is too vague for me to bother writing an application, and 2020 is next year, so who knows? Use Brave & Basic AttentionToken — they are real now,” said Eich.

Some may think Coil and Brave complement each other but Eich is not one of them as he questions Coil’s privacy policy and the number of publishers they have signed up.

“Hopefully someday, Brave will implement Web Monetization natively (using BAT of course) and we can fight for an open monetization ecosystem together!” Thomas fired back.

Eich, however, was just starting as he said, Web Monetization conflates attention measurement/economics with settlement mechanics.

Moreover, “instead of buffering attention measurement on the client, it opens a stream and starts chatting away with a provider. Privacy is an afterthought via UUIDs. Timing channels and third party JS vulns leap out at me each time I read this spec,” Eich said.

In collaboration with @mozilla and @creativecommons, we're excited to announce the $100 million @GrantForTheWeb to advance #WebMonetization for creators. Learn more here: https://t.co/kZ1gWysNuc

— Coil (@Coil) September 16, 2019