A few days ago we talked about the magical Brave Browser and how it intends to change the entire ad ecosystem completely. For the uninitiated, big tech companies like Facebook and Google are making money off your attention. Since the social media era has led to monetization of your attention, it is only fair that you get a piece of that pie. That’s where Basic attention token (BAT) and Brave browser kick in.
In today’s blogpost, we talk about what is Basic Attention Token (BAT) and how can you sign up as a creator in this program. Without anything else between you and your beloved moolah, let’s get started.
What is Basic Attention Token or BAT?
BAT or basic attention token is an Ethereum based (ERC20) token that is the native utility token of the brave browser. We discussed that how brave browser removes the intermediary between brands and content creators to run targeted ads. Because there’s no intermediary here, a significant chunk of the pie is also given to the users who spend time and attention to view these ads.
All of this is being done without compromising with the privacy of the user and still delivering targeted advertisement through tracking the behavior on the browser itself.
In a nutshell, BAT is the money used by advertisers to run ads on the brave browser.
How Does BAT Work?
BAT works hand in hand on Ethereum blockchain and Brave browser to facilitate the transactions between brands, content creators and users.
Take an example of this blog. A crypto brand can come and pay me X amount of Basic Attention Token to run ads for them. On the other hand, basis the attention score of the user, he would be shown these ads and incentivized if at all he/she decides to click on them.
Please note that user can choose NOT to view any ads on the brave browser from settings. However, if someone wishes to monetize their attention, BAT and brave ecosystem makes it possible.
To sum it all, BAT is the token that advertisers pay to run ads on brave browser. This money is then used to incentivize users for their attention and content creators for the publications.
Why Blockchain and Crypto?
At this point, one may ask, why was all of this made on a blockchain. I could very well come up with such a system using USD/INR and get away with it. Well, it is indeed a very legit question. A question that should be asked to all crypto projects out there to understand what value Blockchain really adds.
As far is Brave and BAT are concerned, it achieves decentralization through blockchain technology. All the ad matching happens locally on your machine and the data is not stored on a server. Think of it like this: Imagine Facebook gets hacked one fine day. Anyone could steal your persona. However, with blockchain technology jumping in, that possibility is gone.
Secondly, it adds a layer of transparency. Since all transactions are happening on a blockchain, one could clearly find out about the brand payments, user incentivization etc.
BAT Tokenomics:
Trading at $1.5 right now, Basic Attention Token, has a total supply of 1.5B. The token was launched in 2017 when 1ETH could buy you 6400 BAT. The current market cap of BAT is $2,266,136,037.03. Company raised $7.8 Million by selling 1B tokens. 200M out of this went to the development fund and 300M went to user growth pool. This is the marketing fund meant to promote the usage of Brave software.
Brave software is currently being used by 30M users and 1M creators. This means as the ecosystem grows overall, the price of the token is likely to increase. Why? Because it is deflationary in nature.
Advertisers have welcomed Brave’s approach of running ads. With privacy becoming a bigger concern by the day, there is a huge potential upside to BAT when more and more brands adopt these methodologies. If you follow the tech news, you might have heard about Facebook’s pivot from social media to metaverse thus further hinting at the sustainability concerns around the initial ad model.
Brave’s Creator Program: How to Sign Up?
As a creator, do you also want to run ads? Also, the creator program will let you accept donations from the viewers for your work. This section will take you through a step by step guide on how I enabled it for my blog:
A: Head over to this website. This is the link to brave’s official publisher page.
B: Sign up or login using your Email ID. For some reason, there’s no password thingy involved here. Each time you login, it’ll be through a link sent to your email ID.
C: On the top right, find a button that says add channel. There are multiple options to chose from here. You could own a website, Youtube Channel, Twitch, Reddit, Twitter etc.
D. Select website (for your blog). Add the URL and checkmark the box that says, allow brave to run ads.
E. Once you add your blog URL, you need to verify yourself as the owner of that domain. There are multiple ways by which you can do that and you can pick whatever suits you best. Since I use WordPress to manage my blog, I simply installed a plugin and copy pasted a verification code in to that plugin once it was installed.
It did take me a couple of tries to sort that out (some glitch may be) but once I did that, I could see a BAT logo in the URL bar whenever I opened my blog. I also donated myself about 5 BAT to see if everything’s up to the mark or not. Worked like charm.
Conclusion:
Web 3.0 is coming. It’s the use cases like these that keeps me hooked to this realm. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency truly have the potential to revolutionize every industry out there.
So? What are you waiting for? Go ahead and download the brave browser and start monetizing your attention. Are you a creator? Sign up and start earning. Only want to watch the party from a distance? BAT is available on key Indian exchanges like CoinDCX. Jump in! Still got questions?
Got questions? Want to take it to the next level? Reach out to me using your preferred platform from the links below
Until next time..
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