If you have had a pulse in the past year, then you have probably heard about Bitcoin. There is a low chance you understand it beyond the notion of “digital money” and to some degree you would be correct. Bitcoin, other crypto projects, and generally speaking, blockchain technology will redefine many industries in the coming years. The financial sector has a keen eye on blockchain development as it aims to provide a hyper secure, public, and trustless repository for transactions.

More relevant to our world, blockchain can directly help content creators. We wrote about how the Internet is starting to pay artists and this is another example of what advancements in technology can do for these people.

It’s called BAT, Basic Attention Token. It is a decentralized, transparent digital advertising platform based on the Ethereum blockchain. The guy that invented Javascript and co-founded Firefox is behind it. It allows advertisers to purchase ad space and user attention along with analytics dashboards and reward systems.

Wait, reward systems? Like what?

Publishers and content creators will receive ad revenue and user contributions in BAT. Think of it like getting paid in Bitcoin, but you are getting paid in BAT which can then be transferred to fiat currency like the dollar. Another great thing is users will earn and be rewarded in BAT for their attention. Doing things like watching ads will earn you some BAT.

A big downside is this currently works exclusively on a browser called Brave. It is a rapidly growing, privacy-protecting web browser that blocks ads and trackers by default. All users, creators, and publishers need to do is start using the Brave browser and opt-in to see BAT ads. Google Chrome extensions and support for other browsers will be arriving soon.

So why does any of this matter? Can’t we just continue to go on our favorite blogs and share their content?

Yes, you can continue to do that, but it becomes much more mutually beneficial to yourself and the creator by interacting with them in the Brave browser. In fact, we are in the process of becoming a verified BAT publisher.

BAT represents a fundamental rethinking of the way digital ads are delivered. They are served locally so that will increase load times for webpages and it takes out the middle man for tracking so your data privacy is safe. Users can also donate easily to their favorite creators and who would not want that?!

The reason people should care about all of this is the advertising industry is in crisis. User privacy has become a casualty as their business model continues to focus on consumer surveillance. There have been stricter regulations that these advertisers must adhere to, thus making the end user’s experience worse as irrelevant and annoying ads are served.

Additionally, Basic Attention Token aims to fix underlying economic incentives by correctly pricing user attention, delivering on privacy compliance, user anonymity, and offering a new win-win-win digital advertising paradigm for publishers, advertisers, and users.

If you would like learn about you can get BAT, the Brave browser, and how this will benefit you, try out their official FAQ and website.

Beyond The Music is all about creating opportunities in the music industry. If that means experimenting with emerging technologies to significantly incentivize creators, then we are definitely on board.

Information gathered here