Brave, the web browser founded by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, held an initial coin offering (ICO) in May 2017 with the issuance of BAT. Basic Attention Token or BAT is a utility token, based on the Ethereum (ERC-20) technology, which is used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers and users in a new blockchain-based digital advertising and service platform. The ICO was very successful, collecting 35 million dollars within 30 seconds.
The tokens are intended for use on the BAT platform, a new blockchain-based digital advertising and service platform linked to the web browser Brave. The token is not a substitute for fiat, paper of value, a good or any other financial instrument.
“Digital advertising is broken.”
Basic Attention Token improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers and users. Advertisers buy ads with BAT tokens, which are distributed among publishers and consumers who view ads. The publisher receives tokens to host the ad and the consumer to view the ad. The value of the token is based on the user’s attention, which simply means that a person is focused mentally involved.
Given the open source nature of the project, the company expects that, when developing the BAT protocol, developers from third parties will come up with new applications for the token. A number of these applications could be:
