Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an integral part of the platform, creating a new market. Together with the web browser Brave, they reveal to the user the world of advertising and the Internet, where your anonymity comes first.
Currently, the total number of BAT tokens available on the market is: 1,500,000,000. In terms of volume, BAT takes 50th place with more than $17 million in daily turnover. The market capitalization reaches 290 million USD. At the time of writing this article, the price of a BAT token is: 0.20 USD. It is worth noting that on 9 January 2018 the BAT price set its record and amounted to: 0.98 USD.
History and current state of the project
The first online banner advertisement appeared in 1994. The advertiser was Hotwire and obtained 44% click rate. At that time it was relatively insignificant, but it suggested the promise of a “free” website – paid for by advertisers. From this first small step a whole new industry developed, ad-tech. Companies worth many billions of dollars appeared, offering software “for free”, where the real price was to collect information about you to drive the advertising economy.
The Brave platform (we will call it a combination of a BAT token and a Brave browser), was founded by the author of the world-famous Java Script programming language, co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox: Brendan Eich.
The BAT token is based on the Ethereum blockchain, the ERC-20 standard. The project saw the light of day on May 31, 2017, and was awaited by a very large group of supporters. Just before the start, many experts claimed that BAT and the Brave browser can set new trends in the market of web browsers and advertisements displayed on our monitors. Today we can safely say that they were right.
BAT improves the effectiveness of digital advertising by creating a new token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers and users.
The BAT token makes it possible to make micropayments, which are supervised by the Brave Ledger system. The general concept is that the advertiser sends the token payment along with advertisements to users in a blocked state (they cannot be used). When users watch the ads, the payment flow is unlocked by keeping part of the payment on their wallet and passing on Brave’s payment shares and the rest to the publisher.
In the BAT ecosystem, advertisers award BAT to publishers for attracting users’ attention. Users will also receive some BAT for participation. They can pass them back to publishers or use them on the platform. This transparent system maintains the privacy of the user’s data by displaying less but more relevant advertisements. Publishers experience less fraud while increasing their reward percentage. The first part of the solution, the Brave browser, already works. Brave is a fast, open, privacy-oriented browser that blocks invasive ads and tracking modules, and includes an accounting system that anonymously measures user attention aggregation to accurately reward publishers.
The project is constantly being developed by one of the best teams in the entire cryptographic ecosystem.
BAT team
Brendan Eich (creator of BAT and Brave) was born on 4 July 1961. Creator of the popular scripting language JavaScript. Founder of Mozilla and Firefox.
Brian Bondy (chief programmer of Brave Software) – Just like Eich, he worked on such famous projects as Firefox and Mozilla. It was while working on these projects that he met Eich with whom he created Brave Software. Co-founder of VisionWorks Solutions.
Ben Livshits (Chief Scientist ) – for many years connected with Microsoft (over 10 years). In Brave since 2017. He worked for Yahoo, among others.
What distinguishes BAT?
Nowadays, more and more people use different kinds of applications to block advertisements on the Internet and help to hide our real IP. Every marketer is perfectly aware of the power of advertising on the Internet, on the other hand, he knows how hard it is to reach such a client. The web browser Brave and BAT is supposed to change that.
Brave is committed to users’ privacy by protecting their data, blocking ads and scripts that enable tracking and collecting data about them. As a reward, users get the possibility to earn BAT tokens.
The community gathered around the project is its greatest strength.
Brave web browser
Among the many features of the Brave browser, Brave Shields deserve special attention. Shields prevent you from being tracked on the Internet by web trackers. Even Brave Software does not know what you are doing. Shields block the tracking modules and the advertisements based on them as soon as you install and start your browser; you don’t have to turn on or configure anything. Browse the web, convinced that no one’s concerned about your interests and reading habits.
Brave also has a built-in AdBlock to get rid of intrusive ads.
The browser has private windows that are directly integrated into the Tor network. Using Tor in a private window means that pages cannot see your real IP address during your visit.
When you later return to the same page in the private Tor window, the page will not be able to recognize that it is you again – so you can remain anonymous.
