Almost two years have passed since the Basic Attention Token initial coin offering (ICO). But the main product of BAT ecosystem, "Brave Ads" hasn't been shipped yet. This has certainly made many investors concerned about the future of BAT. I believe that this is a legitimate concern but I don't question the integrity of the BAT Team. They may miss the deadline by a little but they will definitely ship the product. Now, let me discuss why it is taking so long for the BAT team to ship Brave Ads to us.

Brave Ads isn't just a simple ad exchange platform. It needs other components of Brave Browser to function properly. These components are:

1. Brave Browser Wallet

2. Brave Anti-Fraud System

3. User Attention Algorithm

Brave Ads can't be shipped before the wallet is developed. Without the wallet, people won't be able to withdraw the BAT they earned from seeing ads. This wallet will take a while to develop because of security concerns. Software related to financial transactions generally take longer to develop because they are rigorously tested before they are released. If a bug is found in the wallet, it could be used to steal funds from thousands of users.

The second component I mentioned is the Brave Anti-Fraud System which runs in the client computer (computer of the user who installed Brave). This is a sensitive component because it will collect and store user data and save that on the client computer. These data may contain sensitive information about the user.

Brave Team will have to ensure that data collected is well protected and available to the user only. Any vulnerability that allows data breach will be a major embarrassment for Brave. So, the team will have to double or triple check the realiability of it before they ship it.

The last thing that is delaying the launch is potential for gaming the system. Brave will value user attention based on an algorithm. Since Brave is fully open source, hackers and bad actors can see what this algorithm is and how user attention is valued by the system. They can use that data to game the system to get extra BAT rewards.

This is why Brave Team will have to patch all the holes that might help bad actors steal extra rewards from the system. The system will be designed to value human interactions and prevent bots from abusing the system.

If Brave Inc wanted, they could ship Brave Ads within the next 30 days but that would be of low quality. It will have bugs and critical loopholes. I am sure that's not what the BAT community wants. The core of the major components of Brave Ads has already been developed. Brave Ads is live in the developer build of Brave. But it will take a little more time polish them and launch the stable release.

"Brave Ads are already available in dev and beta channels, opt in as promised. If people don’t enable Brave Rewards, no ads. If you enable BR but want ads off (so you only donate), the switch is top of panel on left. No way to force this on, it has to win users on its merits. HTH" - BrendanEich

When will Brave Team finally release stable version of Brave Ads?

I don't know the specifics but they stated it will be launched sometime in 2019. Chriscat from BAT team recently stated in a reddit reply that it will be released "later in 2019".

Thanks for reading. If you find any inaccuracies or you disagree with any of my assertions, consider leaving a comment about that.