Here’s some news about tangible money.

Civil, the earnestly hopeful, sometimes scorned, promise-filled blockchain-crypto journalism startup that’s managed to attract about a dozen new publications and hoping to kick off a public sale of its own CVL tokens, is partnering with Splice Newsroom to distribute a $1 million pool of money to “help create 100 media startups in Asia over the next three years.”

Like the money for grants that are going to Civil’s “first fleet” of newsrooms on its platform, the $1 million comes out of the $5 million Civil raised from Consensys last year. From the Splice announcement on Tuesday (Singapore time):

Splice and Civil will create a $1 million fund to catalyze the growth of media startups in Asia. Splice will manage this fund and make pre-seed, micro-investments to help entrepreneurs take their ideas to prototype stage, and with the support of this network and community, even further.

We’ll take a broad definition of the media equation. Entrepreneurship is needed across the this new media stack — publishing, advertising, data, identities, privacy, and membership.

We’ll have more details in the next few weeks on how we’ll assess ideas and how we’ll make this happen across the region. We don’t have all the pieces together, but we would love to hear from you on what you’d like to see and how you think we should approach delivering this dream. If you have an idea you’re ready to talk about, get in touch on this form.

Thanks Mark. Now I have to figure out how to make this shit work. 🤔

— Alan Soon / @SpliceNewsroom (@alansoon) July 31, 2018

The Singapore-based Splice, helmed by Alan Soon and Rishad Patel, focuses on reporting on and supporting media innovation in Asia. (Nieman Lab exchanges content with Splice.) It will also be joining Civil as part of its early fleet of newsrooms (no cash grant, though, as with the others Civil publications), and will get an allotment of CVL tokens. They emphasize though, that blockchain “we’re not making a bet on blockchain per se….We do however see an incredible opportunity to reconsider the structural problems with media and inject it with a newfound fervor that blockchain is helping to drive.”

The “Splice 100” initiative will officially start next January. Splice will be in charge of offering those looking to launch media projects “up to $15,000 to take their ideas to prototype their stage, and help them define their vision, strategy, operations and workflows,” according to Civil’s announcement.

You can read Splice’s announcement here, and Civil’s announcement here.