Digital Advertising Sucks! This is the problem that Brendan Eich (founder of Javascript and Firefox) and his project Brave are trying to fix. Brave aims to create “blockchain based digital ads” that rewards users and publishers for viewing and creating content with the funds from advertisers. By cutting out the middle men, this project will allow for all parties to benefit by finding an equal middle ground.
Have you ever been looking up news and run into a paywall? Of course, you have! Big news publishers like the Washington Post, Forbes, and the New York Times have bills to pay and mouths to feed. It isn’t wrong for them to try to monetize their content. It is wrong, however, to force users to pay or turn off ad blockers. Especially when a webpage takes twice as long to load and has 11 ads for a knock off watch you will never buy. The Brave platform allows all parties to benefit by giving users freedom of choice whether or not to see ads, allowing publishers to dismantle pay walls, and empowering advertisers to reach a captive audience.
The Brave browser is truly revolutionary technology, and is one of the few Blockchain projects to solve a real-world problem. The best part is, the browser uses a proprietary cryptocurrency for payments. This is the basic attention token, traded under the symbol BAT.
At the time of writing this article, BAT is ranked #54 on coinmarketcap at $0.34 per token. This is only about a 2x price increase since it was first listed on the market, so there is plenty of room to grow. The total supply is 1.5 billion BAT, with 1 billion currently circulating. Of the 500 million that is not in circulation, 300 million of that is dedicated to the user growth pool or UGP.
You may have seen some of the media coverage of Brave’s million dollar referral program; an initiative to grow the Brave publisher and user base. If you are unfamiliar, Brave gave out 30 BAT to anyone who downloaded the browser for about a week. While not all of these new users stayed on the platform, the initiative sparked a lot of media coverage and got a lot of YouTube creators like Phillip Defranco spreading the word to their fanbase.
BAT and Brave are something you should keep your eye on. This million dollar referral program is just the first of many initiatives the Brave project will be doing to promote new users to switch to the Brave browser. Additionally, Brave is working hard to get new advertisers to sign up to their platform. This will enable publishers and content creators to get paid for their work, and will enable users to get paid for allowing advertisements in their browser. It is a interesting and exciting project, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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