Basic Attention Token (BAT)

After great community collaboration DYOR has rebranded into CryptoWiki.me 🥳 a moment to celebrate!

From now on all new information will be added within the CryptoWiki.mecommunity website! No longer over here. So be sure to move over to stay on top of new research developments!

Same content - better & cleaner experience 🤝

DYOR started out in 2015 on Fandom and has now grown to ~3500 pages on CryptoWiki.me 🤩

All the information that you can find in these pages is public knowledge with sources provided. The community is encouraged to add truthful and unbiased entries to further this body of work.

Follow @cryptowiki\_me on Twitter to be up to date on pages being created or edited.

## Basics

* Started in:
* Mainnet release: Brave browser was launched in June of 2016 with support for BAT being integrated in the latter half of 2017.
* Based in:

* From Token Tuesdays (15-10-2019): *"A digital currency used to incentivize the viewing of advertisements. Ads on Brave are opt-in, meaning that you only have to view them if you so choose. Better yet, if you do view an ad, you’re rewarded in the form of Basic Attention Tokens."*
* The token used by the open source, privacy centered and attention based project, called The Brave Browser.
* *“Basic Attention Token radically improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers, and users. It all happens on the Ethereum blockchain.*
* *The token can be used to obtain a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the Brave platform. The utility of the token is based on user attention, which simply means a person’s focused mental engagement.”*

## History

* *“From 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.”*
* Is a fork of the Google Chromium project.

## Token

### Launch

* From Token Tuesdays (15-10-2019):

"*Seeing as the Brave founders brought an extensive amount of reputable experience to the table, the BAT token sale went on to be one of the more prominent ICOs in 2017. On May 31st, 1 billion BAT tokens were sold to a combination of public and private investors while another 500 million BAT was allocated towards the company. The project raised an estimated $36M with participation from distinguished funds such as 1confirmation, Pantera Capital, and Digital Currency Group (DCG).*

*It is important to note that 300 million of that 500 million BAT allocated for the company is set aside for a user growth pool. According to the whitepaper, the endowment will be used to reward early adopters of the Brave browser and to reward participation in the BAT ecosystem. Any unused BAT after an extended period of time is sent back to the user growth fund to be redistributed at any point in the future. Once the growth pool is exhausted, no new tokens will be created."*

### Utility

* From their website:

*" It is a utility token based on the Ethereum technology that can also be used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users in our new, blockchain-based digital advertising and services platform."*

### Token Details

* From Token Tuesdays (15-10-2019):

"*As it stands today, there are currently no holding or staking mechanisms in place for the underlying Brave Reward system itself. Similarly, there are no existing burn mechanisms and while the growth pool provides a strong foundation for adoption in the next few years, it’s unclear how the ecosystem would attract new users in the event that all growth tokens were distributed."*

* Brave takes 5% of publisher contributions
* *"Generally speaking, Brave ads can be thought of as a two-sided marketplace between advertisers and users in which brands purchase BAT (an ERC20 token) to fuel their campaigns. As of writing, BAT is distributed as a rewarded everytime an ad notification is viewed. In the future, the Brave team is planning on integrating engagement-based rewards where each advertisement may have a specific budget that is distributed to viewers relative to some engagement metric, like how long they viewed the video."*

## Tech

* Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
* Code can be viewed [insert here].

### Implementations

* Built on: Ethereum and Google Chrome. According to Brave, BAT is now available as a wrapped token on BSC (20-3-2021).

### How it works

* Brave will be using (21-9-2018) blockchain identity startup Civic’s verification services to ensure publishers are paid for their content with its token.

### Other Details

#### Uphold Integration and user complaints

* "*More recently, a partnership (3-10-2019) with Uphold allowed users to take their rewards out of Brave and convert it to other digital assets. This was a big step forward as the previous version was unidirectional, meaning that users who earned BAT could only send it to other users on Brave."*
* After the integration some Reddit users complained (11-2019) about missing balances:

*"As a huge Brave fan, this disappoints me quite a bit. I mean look at the subreddit -- full of threads about disappearing tokens, publishers not receiving tips, broken withdrawals, etc. I hope everything gets figured out quickly, but this has been going on for weeks now. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here ;) Give users full control of their browser wallet w/ private key. I was very hesitant to KYC, but decided to go through with it because of my publisher status. Lo and behold, after tipping my balance disappeared. No way of looking at the wallet on a block explorer so it makes it impossible for the end-users to investigate. Even more frustrating."*

## Privacy Method being used

* Says all their tips will be anonymous:

"*All Brave Rewards analysis is done without disclosing your identity. The analysis is carried out  on-device via statistical voting and over the network via the open source ANONIZE2 protocol, so that neither Brave, nor any other entity, can correlate browsing page views with contributions."*

## Roadmap

* Had an updated one out (13-7-2021). Mainly talks about the wallet and BraveSwap being close to done.
* Old one be found here (22-2-2021);

*"Features of the Brave Wallet will include:*

1. *A new, native Ethereum wallet implementation, replacing the existing Crypto Wallets in Brave.*
2. *Redesign of the current UI with UX designed to reduce friction among accounts.*
3. *Mobile as well as desktop support.*
4. *A JavaScript Ethereum Provider API (window.ethereum) supplied to web pages by default, without the need to install a separate extension.*
5. *Custom experiences for DeFi and NFT use-cases.*
6. *Options for buying crypto with fiat payment methods such as credit/debit cards, bank accounts, and smartphone wallets.*

*Future aspirations for the Brave Wallet include:*

1. *Utilizing BAT earned through Brave Rewards to pay transaction fees.*
2. *Support for integrated NFT redemption uses within Brave.*

*Brave DEX Aggregator: DeFi for Everyone. Brave will bring DeFi to everyone through a new decentralized exchange aggregator to enable token swaps with distinct advantages and added value for Brave/BAT users, including:*

1. *Discounts when utilizing BAT for paying transaction fees.*
2. *Discounts for users that hold BAT balances in their wallet.*
3. *Multi-chain support with many assets and blockchains.*

*Some of the things we plan to explore for Brave DeFi include:*

1. *A Decentralized EXchange (DEX) where Brave will incentivize liquidity providers to grow the BAT and broader crypto ecosystems.*
2. *L2 solutions or other optimizations (see Themis section) to enable DeFi access and participation for people with as little as $1 in BAT earnings.*

*BAT is a key component in Brave’s mission to build a Decentralized Web. Towards that end we will research the following:*

1. *BAT utility for search engines.*
2. *Use of BAT for e-commerce.*
3. *Use of BAT for VPN and various private communication platforms.*
4. *BAT rewards for content verified on IPNS.*
5. *Ability to use BAT for content pinning on IPFS (file sharing)."*

## Audits

* Bug bounty program can be found here. Max payout is $500 (29-6-2020).
* Blockchain Security DB (29-6-2020) shows 1audit. The latest was in 5-2017.

### Bugs

* Is vulnerable to an exploit in Ethereum. From Bitcoin.com (27-8-2020):

"*ERC20s who are allegedly vulnerable to the fake deposit exploit include BRC token, PWR token, BAT, HPT token, Cloudbric, RPL token, Moviecredits, and more."*

## Usage

* From Token Tuesdays (15-10-2019):

"*In early 2019, Brave highlighted its recent success of a 5x year-over-year increase in monthly active users, reaching 5.5 million MAU by the end of 2018 (up from 1.1 million) with over 280,000 verified publishers. The browser has improved tremendously since its launch in 2017 with major product redesigns and additional use-cases for BAT. And it’s beginning to show.*

*Website publishers have also seen a large increase in 2019. At the beginning of the year, Brave only had 9,700 websites using Brave as an advertising platform. Now, there are well over 33,000 websites leveraging the Brave Browser and its digital advertising campaigns. With this, website publishers have increased by 241% year-to-date (YTD).*

*Given that crypto twitter (CT) is a large part of the crypto community, Brave was quick to introduce tipping and other features into the platform. In particular, Twitter saw tremendous publisher growth since its integration in May of 2019. With this, Brave has nearly eclipsed 28,000 unique Twitter publishers while reaching a 1,213% growth rate in less than 6 months.*

*Other Brave publisher platforms include Youtube, Twitch, Reddit, Github, and Vimeo which have also seen impressive growth in the past year."*

* From Cointelegraph (5-5-2020):

*"During a May 5 Twitter live stream, the CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, talked with Brendan Eich, the CEO and co-founder of Brave. Eich said that his crypto-enabled web browser reached 13.8 million monthly active users at the end of April, to which Zhao said: “That’s probably the most active user base in crypto, to be honest.”*

*Still, Eich admitted that most do not actually use its built-in cryptocurrency features. He said that the number of users who choose to join the crypto-based Brave Rewards system that had their wallets active over the last 30 days is 1.7 million, about 12.32% of total users."*

* Brave is at 20m monthly active users (4-10-2020).

### Projects that use or built on it

* From Token Tuesdays (15-10-2019):

*"BAT is said to be the first new asset supported in the upcoming release of MakerDAO’s Multi-Collateral Dai this November. For those unfamiliar, this means that BAT will be able to be staked as a proxy to take out a permissionless loan in the form of the DAI stablecoin.
This is important as this mechanism introduces a means for BAT to be locked via smart contracts, reducing the circulating supply on the open market. While we recognize that the demand for BAT as a form of collateral is likely minimal, it’s important to recognize that out of all the possible assets to choose from, BAT was selected as one of the most viable ERC tokens on the market."*

## Forks

### Dissenter

* There is a fork called Dissenter by the creators of Gab, that is looking at using BTC Lightning Network instead of BAT.

### Braver Browser

* From Decrypt (9-6-2020):

*"Dubbed the “Braver Browser,” the team behind the project announced the creation of the new fork on June 6. "No token, no adware, and no referral link injections." Developers are forking a version of the Brave Browser to remove many of its for-profit features. The move was triggered by Brave's use of referral links. Brave CEO Brendan Eich warns that stripping out all of Brave's "revenue legs" could leave the new fork without the necessary funding in the future."*

* From Decrypt (9-7-2020):

"*Formerly known as Braver, the fork of Brave today changed its name to Bold Browser. The team behind the fork said it received legal threats for using a similar name to the browser it forked from. Brave CEO Brendan Eich says his firm will not shy away from defending its trademarks."*

## Coin Distribution

* From Our Network #23 (30-5-2020):

"*The wealth distribution within Brave network has evolved with the different market cycles. The graphic below shows the percentage of wallets within the community owning 90% of all tokens in circulation (out of exchange platform’s wallets).*

1. *During the 2017 bull market, the wealth concentration has significantly decreased, reaching almost 25% for wallets owning 90% of tokens in circulation.*
2. *The 2018-19 bear market brought a break in this trend with a consolidation of wealth on a smaller part of the community, reaching the 10% level in late 2019.*
3. *Wealth concentration is now back to a decentralized trend with around 15% wallets holding 90% of tokens in circulation out of exchange platforms’ wallets."*

## Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

### Team

* Eich, Brendan; Founder, CEO
* Bondy, Brian; co-founder, CTO, Previously: Khan Academy, Mozilla, Evernote
* Zhu, Yan; Chief Information Security Officer, EFF Fellow. Previously: Yahoo, Tor Project, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger

#### Advisors

* Ankur Nandwani; Advisor, comes from Coinbase
* Wilcox, Zooko; Advisor, if from of Zcash, Mojo Nation, DigiCash
* Badros, Greg; Advisor, Angel Investor; previously: Facebook, Google

### Partners

* Partnered with Dow Jones Media Group to experiment with a blockchain content delivery system.
* As of 7-2019 on the partner & clients list of ZeppelinOS. They have done a security audit of Brave.
* "*More recently, a partnership with Uphold allowed users to take their rewards out of Brave and convert it to other digital assets. This was a big step forward as the previous version was unidirectional, meaning that users who earned BAT could only send it to other users on Brave."*
* Brave has partnered (24-3-2020) with Binance to let users trade cryptocurrencies on its new tab page.
* Is partnering (9-6-2020) with the popular Korean pop group BTS and e-sports team Rush Gaming to release a limited edition version of its browser for Japan residents.

### Investors

* "*funded by Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, and Huiyin Blockchain Venture among others.”*
* Is part of the portfolio (9-3-2020) of 1confirmation.

 (:

Knowledge empowers us all and will help us get closer to the decentralised world we all want to live in!

Making these free wiki pages is fun but takes a lot of effort and time.

If you have enjoyed reading, tips are appreciated :) This will help us to keep expanding this archive of information.

BAT tip address: 0x2bE58b1Fe1d178f92ED83455D7078F8f5C932bd4