Blockchain and cryptocurrency sphere is growing rapidly. Blockchain is taking over obsolete systems in every other niche, including the voting system, national currencies, stocks, legal system and more. So what is Basic Attention Token? Well, this is the claimed blockchain answer to the problems that rise in the advertising niche.
The blockchain-based digital advertising network called Basic Attention Token, or BAT, is powered by its token for appropriately rewarding consumers for their attention. It also gives advertisers a greater return on their ad expenditure.
This service is provided by the Brave Browser, where users can view secure advertisements to earn BAT incentives. To increase engagement and reduce risks from ad fraud and misuse, advertisers can provide personalized advertising.
In this advertising ecosystem, all the users, publishers, and advertisers trade Basic Attention Tokens, which serve as the incentive currency. BAT tokens are used by advertisers to fund their advertising campaigns. A small percentage of this money is given to advertisers, while 70% is given to users. This would improve cost-efficiency by eliminating the intermediaries that traditionally push up advertising expenses.
Right after the very quickly sold-out initial coin offers (ICOs) ever, Basic Attention Token was introduced in 2017. The platform raised a total of $35 million in less than sixty seconds. Through its Brave Rewards program, it has made its attention-based advertising experience available to users in most nations. The most active ad campaigns by November 2020 were in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy are the two founders of Basic Attention Token. They are two highly regarded figures in the web surfing software sector. The chief executive officer (CEO) of Brave Software, Inc. is Brendan Eich. The parent company of the Brave browser and Basic Attention Token is the same. Brian Bondy also joins as CTO for both Basic Attention Token and Brave. Sixteen team members are listed on the Basic Attention Token website, and many of them have backgrounds in programming, engineering, or research.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is created on the Ethereum blockchain and protected by a proof-of-work consensus process endorsed by the Ethereum mining community. This ensures that Basic Attention Token transactions are genuine and permanent.
How does Basic Attention Token Work?
Open-source browser Brave prioritizes privacy and manually disables all unwanted advertisements and trackers with Brave Shields. To enhance users’ exposure to advertising, it also uses an integrated ledger system to track user attentiveness anonymously. This is accomplished by figuring out the time and pixels of each advertisement shown to a user.
By using in-device machine learning, Brave links to content with advertisers that are actually relevant, while feedback mechanisms ensure that users see advertisements for the goods they are most likely to purchase. The identities of its users are protected by Brave, and all of this data is encrypted and stored alone on the device.
Anyone using the browser has the option to enable Brave Ads, which rewards users with Basic Attention Tokens for their time spent watching advertisements. Additionally, if users activate the Brave Rewards feature, their selected monthly BAT token contribution will be automatically split between the websites they visit based on the amount of time they spend on each.
Additionally, users have the option to tip their favorite content producers directly via the reward panel of their browser or by clicking the tip icon located next to the URL bar on websites like YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit.
What is Basic Attention Token? Tokenomics
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) was created to fix the faulty digital advertising economy. BAT is the medium of exchange for the blockchain-based digital advertising platform. BATs would be awarded to the publishers in the ecosystem for consumers’ attention measured. Additionally, users will get some BATs for taking part. They can either utilize them on the site or contribute them back to the publishers.
The maximum quantity of Basic Attention Token is 1.5 billion tokens, with nearly all of the tokens in circulation. Without converting to a new token smart contract, this cannot be enhanced. Basic Attention Token might be seen as being almost completely diluted as a result. One billion BAT tokens were offered to investors at its 2017 initial coin offering (ICO), with the remaining 200 million tokens locked in a development pool and 300 million BAT set aside for the user growth pool (UGP).
Allocation of budget funds would occur in this manner.
- BAT Team: The team of about twenty members would get 58% of the budget. This funding enables the implementation of the BAT solution, as well as the essential improvements and advancements to the current Brave browser technology.
- Administration: Legal, accounting, security, and other related administration expenditures for BAT would get 10% tokens.
- Marketing: The BAT solution and the Brave browser will be promoted to increase user, publisher, and advertising adoption and awareness. The expansion and upkeep of the global community are also included in this. This will take 12% of the budget.
- Contractors: About 13% of funding goes to contractors. Third parties will get these funds. Suppliers of engineering, marketing, partnerships, affiliate programs, growth-hacking, and other services.
- Budgetary reserve: This would be a 7% budget reserved for unanticipated expenses.
What is Basic Attention Token? Future Plans
The roadmap, as elaborated in the whitepaper of Basic Attention Token, covers four following phases.
Pre 1.0 BAT: Brave uses an anonymous ledger system based on user attention to compensate authors and make donations. The BAT ecosystem will be used by Brave and includes a secure vault that uses the ANONIZE algorithm to preserve user privacy. By adopting this technique, Brave monitors user interest at the browser level and disperses funding to the publishers.
1.0 BAT: BAT wallet and the Brave browser get merged in version 1.0 BAT. Brave will implement its proprietary Zero Knowledge Proof ledger system for verification and transactions. This will safeguard users’ anonymity from marketers, publishers, and other parties. The reported Basic Attention Metric (BAM) data will be used to determine the value of the advertising inventory and the transactions.
Beyond 1.0 BAT: BAT will use a state channel system with a Zero Knowledge Proof protocol to completely disperse the transfer and verification process on Ethereum, protecting user privacy. Based on comments from advertisers, it will include alternative BAM metrics. Full user privacy will be possible. Advertisers, users, and publishers will have access to a decentralized audit trail to ensure appropriate payment for the ads supplied over the BAT network.
Browser as a platform/BAT: Additional BAM metrics are required depending on advertiser feedback. Partners will develop software for the BAT platform. They also intend to investigate value-added services that BAT might be able to provide to users on the browser platform.