5 months ago
7 min read

Basic Attention Token (BAT) And Brave Browser

During one of my browsing sessions, I clicked on a link and opened a page, and boom ads were all over the place. I exited the page and tried again, but I got the same result. I had to load the page for a third time before it displayed what I was looking for without ads all over the place.

1.      Ads

Now I’ve heard people say that 3 is a lucky number, but I love the simplicity and, as such, I would like a page to load immediately after I click on a link without being interrupted by relevant ads. The thing is, though, ads have become a regular thing for internet users, and even when we set up specific ad blockers on our browser, sometimes they fail to stop the ads. It’s like there are ad blocker blockers now, while most internet users think that ads only interrupt their browsing experience. This isn’t exactly true. Ad pop-ups also cost you money. Statistics show that third-party trackers and ads consume up to 50 of your mobile data, as you can tell, by the way, the ads load first, and then the content loads, and not only that your phone’s battery life gets affected by up to 20 percent.

2.      Brave Web Browser

Now you might be wondering what all of this has to do with a cryptocurrency token. In this article, I’m going to explain what the brave web browser is, what the basic attention token is and how you can even get paid in crypto to browse the internet, sometimes up to a hundred dollars a month. Now, before we get into what a basic attention token is as well as its functionalities and how you can earn some it’ll be good to get some background knowledge about the platform upon which it runs to address the ad problems that I mentioned earlier.

3.      Founders

Brian Bondi and Brendan Ike developed the brave web browser now, if you’ve never heard these names before they are some of the brightest minds in the tech space. Brian was a former employee of khan academy in Mozilla and Brendan created javascript and is Mozilla's co-founder. To put it in one sentence: brave is a fast and privacy-first web browser, as well as a blockchain-based digital advertising platform.

4.      Privacy

That is, restructuring how users, advertisers, and publishers use the internet. Let’S break each one of these down. First, it is a privacy-first browser that has ad blockers built-in and a few other features that help keep your personal information private.

5.      More Faster

You should also note that it’s very fast up to three times faster than other web browsers, and this is mostly because they have a built-in ad blocker that blocks a ton of requests to other domains and resources that you don’t need. Secondly, let’s get to the blockchain advertising part the way that this works, publishers of online content earn considerable revenue and advertisers get value for the money that they spend on ads. Just like how the old traditional ads work, these ads aren’t as overwhelming and they don’t follow users around the web.

6.      No Ads

If you’re viewing any youtube video on the brave browser, you won’t see youtube ads, but I, as a creator, will still earn money because I’m signed up for the creator program and have claimed my account as a brave user. You can select how many ads you want to see from 10 per hour down to none. Now we’ll talk later about how you can earn money by using the brave browser.

7.      Basic Attention Token

The brave browser currently has more than 25 million monthly active users, coupled with over a million verified publishers. Moving on, though, what is the Basic Attention Token? The basic attention token is the native utility token of the brave browser, and the basic attention token is simply just an Ethereum token. Its purpose is to provide a better solution to digital advertising. Using a blockchain model see traditional advertising focuses on tracking users, and online data packaging it up, and then selling it to the highest bidder. Facebook and Google are widely known for this, mostly because they have the most popular products that allow them to track their users. For example, you may have experienced a situation when you visited and exited a particular website, but then later you’re scrolling through your Facebook news feed and you see ads from the same company.

8.      API

This is the work of Facebook pixel. An API is installed on that website that you visited to save users' data for future advertising purposes. Sometimes you even speak something, and then you see an ad for it later, hinting that our devices are probably listening to us. While this may be super helpful to brands trying to sell their product, it is a serious privacy invasion and one of the many reasons why the us senate has been slamming Facebook with sanctions. Basic Attention Token developers, on the other hand, offer a different and user-focused approach to advertising.

9.      Tracking

Instead, they measure attention on the browser itself by tracking users, attention, and engagement on active tabs in real-time. They don’t send it back to some centralized server. This gives the browser, an idea of which ads to show, depending on the time, spent on specific content. I've been rambling about this for a minute, but to sum up, the utility of the basic attention token in a single sentence. Bat is a token that advertisers pay attention to. Now, let’s get into how basic attention token works.

10.   Facilitate Transaction

It runs hand in hand with the Ethereum blockchain and the brave web browser to facilitate transactions between readers, content creators, and advertisers. The token brings these parties together for some reasons. When content creators like me, publish a post on their website or post a youtube video one advertiser offers a certain number of basic attention tokens for ad space on that content, after which they will reach an agreement based on the attention score obtained by measuring Users, engagement, though this gets a little more technical and it’s out of the scope of this article, it means the ads are more tailored to the users and to give the advertisers the best bang for their buck.

11.   Tailored Ads

This not only ensures that brave users see well-tailored ads, but also improves the speed privacy, and security of the browser. Like I said earlier, the brave browser also gives users an option for opting out of ads. However, you can choose to view ads and earn Basic Attention Tokens through the brave rewards program to put this in one sentence, if you select to view ads, you earn tokens, some members earn up to a hundred dollars a month just by doing what they do on chrome. Anyways with this model, users only view ads that tickle their fancy and they get paid for it, and advertisers only show ads to interested customers. This creates a win-win situation, as users do not get bugged by irrelevant ads third-party trackers, or malware, and advertisers save cost as they get billed only when interested users click on their ads.

12.   Blockchain

Moving on a distinguishing benefit of using basic attention token and the brave web browser is the blockchain technology which ensures that users, advertisers, and publishers do not need to depend on external servers. The platform matches ads locally on the machine, while also offering constant content flow and faster downloads. To give you an example of why this is a good thing, someone could hack facebook’s database and see where you were eating last night, but they can’t do that with the Brave Basic Attention Token model summing it all up. Advertisers buy basic attention tokens to spend on advertising, and those spent tokens are then given both to the users that see the ads and the creators of the content that the ad is shown it’s a win-win-win, which is why the brave logo has three sides, one For users, one for creators and one for the advertisers. Finally, we’ve come to the fun part.

13.   Potential

I know you may have many questions about the profit potential of investing in the basic attention token, and this is where I’ll answer them the token currently trades around 70 cents and has a market cap of over 1 billion dollars. The project first launched in May of 2017 through ICO, where one Ethereum could buy you 6 400 basic attention tokens at the time. This meant around 7.8 million dollars worth of Ethereum bought 1 billion basic attention tokens. Another 200 million went to the development fund and 300 million tokens went to the user growth pool. The user growth pool is advertising funds to get users to download and use the brave software.

14.   Not Inflationary

Also basic attention token isn’t inflationary. There is a capped supply so as the demand increases, so should the price and although the price of basic attention tokens haven’t moved up in a while, there are a few factors to consider. The first factor is the project backing it. The basic attention token is supported by the brave web browser which currently has over 25 million users and 1 million publishers with the solution that the browser offers. We will most likely see a wider adoption in the future which may positively affect the token’s price. Also, many advertisers have welcomed the braves approach with open arms, meaning that the browser’s advertising partners will continue to grow as a platform expands.

15.   Ad Revenue

This will likely mean an increase in ad revenue converted to a basic attention token helping to boost the price, growth, and stability. Since the token has a finite supply.

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