What Is Basic Attention Token · Jumpstart Blockchain
What Is Basic Attention Token
Each week, the Jumpstart Blockchain senior analysts review and recommend one blockchain project that has a potential to disrupt the respective industry. This week’s blockchain project of the week is Basic Attention Token, a platform that is ready to disrupt the digital advertising industry using…
Each week, the Jumpstart Blockchain senior analysts review and recommend one blockchain project that has a potential to disrupt the respective industry. In this analysis and research, we thoroughly review the product, the vision, the team, and various parameters of success of a product.
This week’s blockchain project of the week is Basic Attention Token, a platform that is ready to disrupt the digital advertising industry using blockchain technology.
The Problem
Businesses spent $88 billion in digital ads in the year 2017 with a 21% growth and numbers are growing each year. Google and Facebook account for 90% of the growth. While Google and Facebook are the leaders in the space, it has also created a monopoly in the space. Google’s ad platform and tools are not designed to be used by an average publisher. That had led to the creation of number of third party ad serving agencies that work as a middleman between the publisher, consumer, and the ad serving platform. Many of these companies report false data and do not provide a transparent report. As a matter of fact, Google itself has involved in several controversies how it reports its users, clicks, and impressions.
Mobile ads cost us $23 a month.
As a result, digital advertising is overrun by middlemen, trackers and fraud. Uusers, publishers, and advertisers are losing from all aspects.
Users are abused
Up to 50% of the average user’s mobile data is for ads and trackers, costing as much as $23 a month.
Ads use about 5 seconds of mobile load time on average.
Ads decrease phone battery life by as much as 21%.
Privacy is violated when large media sites host up to 70 trackers.
Malware (malvertisements, ransom-ware) is up 132% in one year.
Publishers are hurting
Google and Facebook take 73% of all ad dollars and 99% of all growth.
Revenue is recently down 66%.
Bots inflicted $7.2 billion in fraud last year.
Over 600 million phones and desktops run ad-blocking.
Publishers cannot seamlessly monetize value added services.
Advertisers are losing
Advertisers lack good information on what they are paying for.
Marketers are often fooled by bogus websites and bots that commit fraud.
A bridge is only as safe as whatever verifies cross-chain messages. Most major hacks came from stolen validator keys, verification bugs, or bad upgrades, not the chains themselves.
Targeting is poor, making users more likely to ignore ads.
The Solution
Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (+Edge) are top 4 Web browsers with Google Chrome controls about 58% of Web browser market followed by Safari, Firefox, and IE with 13%, 5%, and 4% respectively. All of these browsers track user behavior. Google is worse among all. Not only Google controls ad market but also manipulates data and reports. We’ve seen thousands of smaller independent websites have lost their revenue due to Google’s dominance and monopoly.
CEO of BAT is the creator of JavaScript
This is where the Brave Browser comes in.
The Brave Browser
Brave browser provides a safe, secure, and fast browsing experience. Brave is an open-source, privacy-centered browser designed to block trackers and malware. Brave browser is developed by Brave Software, a company founded and led by Brendan Eich, who created the most popular open source Web programing language, JavaScript. Brendan is also the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, an open source browser.
Brave is 8x faster than Chrome and Safari.
Brave blocks ads and saves your data download on your mobile.
Brave blocks and keeps track of unwanted content.
Brave allows users to earn rewards while surfing Web and also let them give back to the publishers.
Brave disables code and scripts that keeps your browsing history and other data.
Basic Attention Token (https://basicattentiontoken.org/) is an ad serving platform that allows publishers to work direct with advertisers and users. There is no middleman involved in the process. There is no data manipulation.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a blockchain-based advertising system that aims to change how ads are served to Web consumers. Basic Attention Token improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new unit of exchange between publishers, advertisers and users. It all happens on the Ethereum blockchain. The value of the token is based on user attention, which simply means a person’s focused mental engagement. Users can block ads, pay to see different ads, or view ads and earn BAT tokens in exchange. On the other hand advertisers achieve higher returns on investment through better targeting and reduced fraud. All this happens while the anonymity of the user is ensured.
Watch Brendan talks about BAT in the following video.
Team is the most important aspect of a new technology such as blockchain. BAT is being developed by the creator of JavaScript and the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, with a solid team – funded by Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, and Huiyin Blockchain Venture among others.
Current State
Basic Attention (BAT) is a token based on the Ethereum blockchain. The token aims to change business models in the online advertisement space. The token can be exchanged by publishers, advertisers and users.
BAT ICO raised $30 million in less than 30 seconds.
BAT ICO was launched on May 31, 2017 and raised $30 million in less than 30 seconds. According to CMC, the current market cap of BAT is $330 million ranked at #41 with the token price $0.33. Total supply of BAT 1.5 billion with 1 billion tokens are in circulation.
Why We Like BAT
Web has been cluttered by Ad serving products and frauds. A visionary, experienced veterans, open source supporters team is behind BAT, that is dedicated to solve the problem how we browse and experience Web. We believe BAT has everything including an experience team of community lovers, a vision, and the funds. BAT has already raised $30 million within seconds. BAT token trades on various exchanges. BAT team also holds 500 million tokens for the team and future development that is a major leverage when it will be needed.
BAT is also backed by solid team of investors including Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, and Huiyin Blockchain Venture.
The Challenge
Market penetration and competition with Google, Apple, and Microsoft is major challenge for Brave. User adoption and growth will require substantial push from the company. Google dominates the browser market followed by Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer and the new browser versions are getting better day by day at blocking ads and scripts.
On Bitcoin, scale confirmation depth with the amount at risk, since finality is probabilistic. On Ethereum, wait for the finalized checkpoint. On rollups, wait for the batch to be final on L1.
BIP-39 encodes random entropy as 12-24 words and stretches them into a seed; BIP-32/44 derive every key from it. Store the words offline on durable media in several places, never digitally.
