Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a token driving a blockchain-based digital advertising platform designed to equitably reward users for their attention, while offering advertisers enhanced returns on their advertising investments. To learn more about this project, explore our detailed analysis of Basic Attention Token. This experience is facilitated through the Brave Browser, where users can view privacy-preserving advertisements and earn BAT rewards as compensation. Meanwhile, advertisers can deliver targeted advertisements to optimize engagement and reduce losses due to ad fraud and misuse. The Basic Attention Token serves as the reward unit within this advertising ecosystem, exchanged among advertisers, publishers, and users. Advertisers use BAT tokens to pay for their advertising campaigns. From this budget, a small fraction is allotted to advertisers, while 70% is distributed to users—eliminating intermediaries that typically inflate advertising costs to enhance cost-efficiency. Basic Attention Token was launched in 2017 after one of the quickest sell-out initial coin offerings (ICOs) in history, raising $35 million in under a minute. Since then, it has expanded its attention-based advertising experience to users in numerous countries via its Brave Rewards program. As of November 2020, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada boasted the most active advertising campaigns.

Basic Attention Token was founded by Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy, both of whom are highly esteemed figures in the internet browsing software industry. Brendan Eich serves as the CEO of Brave Software, Inc., the parent company behind the Brave browser and Basic Attention Token. Before his tenure at Brave, Eich founded and was the CTO of Mozilla, and is credited with inventing JavaScript in 1995. He also played a crucial role in launching one of the world's most popular web browsers in 2004—Mozilla Firefox. Similarly, Brian Bondy is the CTO of Brave and Basic Attention Token. Bondy is a highly skilled engineer with substantial experience, having worked as a senior software engineer at Mozilla, a software developer at Corel Corporation, and a software development lead at Khan Academy. Collectively, Eich and Bondy bring over 50 years of software development experience. According to the Basic Attention Token website, their team comprises 16 members, many of whom have backgrounds in development, engineering, or research.

The primary application for the Basic Attention Token (BAT) is functioning as a payment token for managing advertising campaigns through Brave Ads. As of November 2020, advertisers are required to commit to a minimum ad expenditure of $2,500 per month to initiate their campaigns. However, a self-service platform with potentially lower limits is currently under development. At present, this advertising budget must be fully paid in Basic Attention Tokens, which advertisers can obtain from a variety of third-party exchange platforms. Brave deducts a small commission from this budget, and the remaining amount is distributed to publishers and users. A key distinguishing feature of the Basic Attention Token and the Brave Browser ecosystem is the ability to reward (tip) users who are not yet part of the network, including both websites and individual Twitter users. These users can then securely register on the platform to claim any tips they have accumulated. Both Basic Attention Token and Brave Browser have experienced substantial user adoption since their inception. As of October 2020, Brave Browser boasts 20.5 million active monthly users, while the Basic Attention Token is held in over 368,000 unique wallets.

Basic Attention Token has a maximum total supply of 1.5 billion tokens, which cannot be increased without transitioning to a new token smart contract. Nearly all of this supply is currently in circulation, making Basic Attention Token almost fully diluted. During its 2017 ICO, a total of 1 billion BAT tokens were sold to investors. The remaining 200 million tokens were allocated to a development pool, and 300 million BAT were reserved for the user growth pool (UGP). As of November 2020, the addresses for both the development pool and the UGP pool are nearly depleted.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an ERC-20 token constructed on the Ethereum blockchain. As an ERC-20 token, it benefits from the security provided by a thoroughly tested proof-of-work (POW) consensus algorithm, supported by a vast network of Ethereum miners. This consensus algorithm guarantees that only legitimate transactions are validated, while the collective efforts of the Ethereum mining network ensure that BAT transactions become effectively irreversible upon confirmation.

Basic Attention Token is available for trading on most major cryptocurrency exchange platforms and currently boasts strong liquidity. Among the most reputable exchanges for BAT trading are Binance, Coinbase Pro, and Huobi Global. As with many cryptocurrencies, BAT can be bought directly using fiat currency at several brokerage services or can be traded against fiat assets on platforms such as Kraken and Bithumb.