Ripple Labs Inc.’s investment subsidiary Xpring today announced a grant of 1 billion Ripple XRP cryptocurrency worth about $264 million into Coil Technologies Inc., a provider of micropayments for content providers.

The funding will be used by Coil to promote its adoption of XRP and the Interledger Protocol. Founded in 2018, Coil is attempting to change the dynamics of content creation by linking creators to readers through a micropayments platform that allows readers to share funds to creators.

It’s pitched as offering an alternative to “the status quo of paid advertisements and selling the public’s attention to the highest bidder.” Coil said its platform is about serving “the people who aren’t being served well today.”

Creators sign up to Coil and encourage readers to sign up to $5 Coil monthly subscription which covers not only their own site but all sites using Coil. Every time a subscribed reader visits a site using Coil they receive a micropayment based on how long the subscribers “enjoy their content.”

The interest for Xpring is to encourage the popularity of Coil as the cryptocurrency used by the service is Ripple’s XRP.

“Advertising and site-by-site subscription models are ready for disruption,” Ethan Beard, senior vice president of Xpring, said in a statement. “The low cost and fast transactions of XRP makes it an ideal tool for Coil to offer an alternative monetization method and have a positive impact on creators.”

Further, the Interledger protocol used by Coil was invented by Ripple as well, though it’s provided as open-source code. Coil’s success in using InterLedger at scale will go toward the promotion of the product alongside that of XRP.

“Partnering with Coil is a natural fit for us not only because of the team’s DNA — which includes folks like Stefan Thomas, who served at Ripple’s CTO for many years and is a co-creator of ILP — but also for its natural alignment with XRP and ILP,” Beard said separately in a Medium post.

Prior to Xpring’s investment, described as a grant versus a traditional investment in return for equity, it’s unknown if Coil had previously raised venture capital.

Image: Coil