There is a view of the internet that suggests it is comprised of content and commerce, with the content promoting commerce. Advertising revenue is the backbone of the current internet. Facebook and Alphabet et al have commodified the attention we pay to content. They sell this commodity to ecommerce platforms with something to sell. The purpose of the vast majority of content on the internet is to inform or persuade a purchase. Content is produced to be clicked on and to sell, rarely to truly inform. This is because publishers are not directly rewarded for their online publications. BAT seeks to change this dynamic.

Facebook and Alphabet’s wanton disregard for our online privacy has always been evident. However it seems it is only in the last year that we have seen any vocal opposition. Mark Zuckerbergs wince inducing performance in front of US senators revealed many reasons why we need an alternative internet. An internet that does not commodify our attention and browsing habits for centralised profits. Our attention and browsing habits should benefit the publishers we choose to engage with and not the advertisers. Yet of course the advertisements are where the revenue is.

Enter BAT

The Basic Attention Token is an ambitious attempt to redefine the relationship between users, advertisers and publishers.

The opening summary of the BAT whitepaper is powerful;

“Digital advertising is broken. The marketplace for online advertising, once dominated by advertisers, publishers and users, has become overrun by “middleman” ad exchanges, audience segmentation, complicated behavioral and cross-device user tracking, and opaque cross-party sharing through data management platforms. Users face unprecedented levels of malvertisements and privacy violations. Mobile advertising results in as much as $23 per month in data charges on the average user’s data plan, slow page loads, and as much as 21% less battery life. In response, over 600 million mobile devices and desktops (globally) employ ad blocking software and this number is growing. Traditional publishers have lost approximately 66% of their revenue over the past decade, adjusted for inflation.”

Enter Brave

We are left in no doubt as to the negative impact of the current advertiser driven dynamic of the current internet on our browsing enjoyment. BAT imagine the solution as a triangle, where rewards flow from advertisers to anonymized ad viewers and to publications providing quality content. Ad viewers can also reward publications through subscriptions or one-time tips. In order to discern whether viewers are actually seeing and engaging with ad content, BAT has developed Brave. Brave is an internet browser that is enjoying a burgeoning reputation as being privacy led. When you download and set up Brave it gives you the option of viewing ads in exchange for tokens. You can opt out of this and enjoy ad free browsing also.

This is the first element of BAT token flow within the Brave browser. The second is intriguing. Upon signing up you are offered some free BAT tokens. These sit in a wallet hosted in the Brave browser. You can indicate how many BAT you wish to use to reward publishers in a given month. Let’s say you’ve decided you’ll give out 20 BAT tokens this month to publishers.

For the sake of a simple example let’s say you only visit 3 sites, blockdelta.io, theguardian.com and bbc.co.uk. You spent half your browsing time on blockdelta, and split the remaining half equally between theguardian and bbc.co.uk. In this instance you would distribute 10 of your BAT to blockdelta and 5 BAT each to the other two sites. The aim here is to create an ecosystem where users take BAT from advertisers and redistribute it to publishers. This is in stark contrast to the current internet advertising dynamic.

Future Outlook

BAT like most altcoins is trading cheaply at circa $0.20 at time of writing. We have written at length about the long term prospects of various altcoins on this site. BAT is a project that still has huge future potential. The project is well developed. The Brave browser is live and there are active users using BAT within Brave.

Brave & BAT are solving addressing two real needs. Firstly the dwindling revenues going to content publishers. Secondly they offer a real and compelling alternative to the current data abuse driven manner of browsing the internet. The biggest challenge for this project is the need for both publishers and advertisers to adopt alongside users. This creates a chicken and egg problem of sorts. However BAT has a good shot at overcoming this challenge because all parties in the triangle are incentivised. Coinbase has repeatedly vouched for BAT which is an important validator.