The cryptocurrency Basic Attention Token aims to radically improve the efficiency of digital advertising by enabling value exchange between advertisers, users and developers.
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain.
It is designed to serve as the medium that rebalances the digital advertising ecosystem.
Currently, Google and Facebook capture 73% of all advertising revenue and account for 99% of industry growth. BAT seeks to change this by addressing unfair revenue distribution, the misuse of personal and mobile user data for ads and trackers, and click manipulation by bots.
This is achieved through a new payment model based on BAT and the Brave browser, developed in parallel. Advertising revenue is shared among website operators, users and the Brave development team.
The goal is to create a transparent, efficient, blockchain-based digital advertising market. All participants should receive a fairer share of revenue by cutting out intermediaries and fraudsters. Users who opt in receive fewer but more relevant ads. Advertisers gain access to higher-quality data about user engagement and ad performance.
BAT and the Brave browser were developed by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and co‑founder of Mozilla and Firefox, together with contributors such as Yan Zhu, a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and W3C contributor, and Marshall Rose, inventor of the Simple Network Management Protocol.
At present, BAT is supported natively by the Brave browser only. The Brave team is working to make BAT available on other browsers as well.
How the BAT token works
As web users, we are all familiar with constant ad interruptions. With the Brave browser, users can choose to block ads entirely with the built-in ad blocker—already used on hundreds of millions of devices—or they can allow ads and be paid in BAT. Tokens earned in this way can be spent on services from participating sites or donated to content creators. Rewarding users for allowing ads offers multiple benefits.
First, ads become less intrusive because the user decides whether to view them. Second, advertisers can deliver ads more precisely to interested audiences. Although Brave does not prevent the collection of user data for advertising purposes, it gives users control over that data and rewards them when they consent to share it.
The Brave browser anonymously measures the amount of attention a user gives an ad and records any interactions. Using these signals and specific algorithms, Brave infers user interests and automatically filters out irrelevant ads.
Given the multi‑billion dollar advertising market and the reputation of the development team, BAT represents an intriguing cryptocurrency with potential, although it remains in the early stages of adoption.
At the time of writing, the price per BAT token is €0.28 with a market capitalization of €286 million, placing BAT among the top 60 cryptocurrencies. The broader crypto market has seen widespread declines in the last 24 hours; live price overviews can be checked in market listings.
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