Crypto & Us : Bite 24 (Basic Attention Token)

We all know that feeling when we are waiting for those longest ‘5 seconds’ to pass before we smash that ‘skip ad’ button on YouTube while we are in the middle of watching something interesting. Ads are important, some ads are fun, but ads are annoying when they pop up when you don’t want them to pop up. A lot of people realized the problem, but we couldn't find a permanent solution where we could harmonize the way ads are presented with the content without intruding. Enter ‘Basic Attention Token’

1. The creator of the Basic Attention Token (BAT) is Brendan Eich, who was also the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox. The whole vision behind creating BAT was to create an efficient and fair way of digital advertising with the help of blockchain technology. BAT is the native token used on the web browser ‘Brave’ built on top of ethereum.
2. The targeted approach to the most basic problems and issues faced while browsing the web and viewing web-based advertising is what makes the project special. Brave browser, an open-source browser crafted to minimize the malware, block trackers, and cookies with a focus on privacy is what the creators believe is the answer to the problem. BAT is used as a currency that is exchanged on Brave between the publishers, advertisers, and users.
3. This goal to improve the web experience is achieved by tapping in on the ‘User Attention’. They track the way user behaves and interacts with digital ads and store this information on a distributed ledger. The information is then used to enhance the viewing experience and pushing tailored content with fewer ads for the users and a targeted audience for the advertisers and publishers. And to facilitate the entire process, BAT is given as a reward to the users according to their time spent on Brave and to the publishers depending upon the amount of attention and views they manage to generate.
4. Brave’s Private Window, similar to Google’s Incognito Mode goes a step ahead in terms of privacy by using Tor to hide the IP addresses, thereby adding an additional layer of privacy that Google fails to offer. In this age where data privacy is of utmost importance, the creators of BAT assure that the user’s private data and the related tracking information are stored on their personal devices, hence ensuring that it remains anonymous and private.
5. The platform boasts of more than 1 million creators, over 12 million wallets, and around 30 million active users on the Brave browser. There are more than 400 advertisers on the platform including big brands like crypto.com and Verizon. The list of publishers includes The Washington Post, Vimeo, and The Guardian, among others.

I personally have been using the Brave browser since last month. And so far it has been a great experience. No banner ads on sites, no ads on youtube, and no randomly popping click baits. I think we all are so stuck in the traditional ecosystem created by the big players that it is difficult to move away from them. The cost of not moving out is our privacy.