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Brave expands Basic Attention Token platform to YouTube

321 points by Helloworldboy 9y ago

proaralyst 9y ago
I think this is a service I'd use if it were available as an extension rather than a browser in its own right.
- glenstein 9y ago
  One attention-crypto as a browser extension is WildSpark by Synereo: https://wildspark.me https://wildspark.me I have no affiliation, I have zero of whatever their coin is, but I randomly signed up for their mailing list a while back out curiosity.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Maybe consider Flattr? From what I can tell it does basically the same thing: https://flattr.com/contributors https://flattr.com/contributors
  - proaralyst 9y ago
    And in another bonus doesn't appear to require tokens.
  - hiq 9y ago
    It does the same with much more overhead for the user as far as I can tell. The point of Brave is to have everything working behind the scene for the user, so no friction.
    - detaro 9y ago
      What's the "much more overhead"? As far as I know, in the current state of Brave you have to buy tokens, just like you put money in flattr. In the future model, Brave will show you ads vs flattr taking money directly - is that much more overhead? (The implementations might differ in other important things, e.g. privacy or fee structure, but the basic user attention model seems similar enough to me)
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        Flattr _used_ to require the user to click a button to indicate they like a particular page and want to support its creator. I assume GP is simply unaware that that's not how Flattr works anymore. Flattr 2.0 works more like Brave does; the user pays a monthly subscription, and Flattr just automatically distributes those funds to creators based on what sites the user views most often that month.
        hiq 9y ago
        I stand corrected, I didn't know about this new version.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    I don't think Flattr will succeed over cryptocurrencies such as BAT/STEEM.
- decentralised 9y ago
  You should really try the browser itself, partly because it will pay you to watch some ads, and partly because it will respect your privacy.
  - proaralyst 9y ago
    But I trust Mozilla more with my privacy and I don't want to watch ads at all!
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      This is why Brave has a limited future as it is. You can't pay me cents to pick a worse browser. It's like the days when there were those pay to surf companies. The promise of money is nice, but most end users don't benefit that much from it. There's a lot more incentive for the company for their product to work than there is for the users to adopt it.
      - decentralised 9y ago
        I'm not deeply familiar with Brave's roadmap but my understanding is that the BAT tokens you'd receive from watching ads could also be used to tip content providers similar to what can be done in Steemit.
    - hiq 9y ago
      This, so much this. Maybe I could reconsider if they paid me more than a few dollars per good (according to me) advertisement, but I doubt that this will be the case. Until then, I will stick to ad-blocking.
      - decentralised 9y ago
        How about this, a system will show you ads and you can chose to skip or stop if you don't like them. In any case for however many seconds you endured, you get paid.
- nfin 9y ago
  Here one item of the Brave-FAQ: Why build a browser and not extensions for top browsers? Extensions face API and performance limits. Our own browser lets us put our best foot forward on speed and deep integration of private ad-tech. We may do extensions if our users find themselves browsing in other browsers often. => give them feedback if you’re interested
  - pwaai 9y ago
    > Why build a browser and not extensions for top browsers? I happen to be working on this right now http://browsercoin.com http://browsercoin.com, if anybody is interested in beta testing it out, my email is in my profile. > Extensions face API and performance limits. Our own browser lets us put our best foot forward on speed and deep integration of private ad-tech. We may do extensions if our users find themselves browsing in other browsers often. Basically, their FAQ answer is debatable because the Chrome API is more than enough to support a Patreonesque model, if you have uBlock and other privacy focused extension, you don't even need to download a heavy browser client. Hence the name BrowserCoin, I'd be open to feedbacks on what you would like to see happen with it.
    - j_s 9y ago
      I clicked; might want to update your site from the nginx welcome page.
      - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
        > "I happen to be working on this right now" Sounds like pwaai is literally working on browsercoin right now! :)
    - edm0nd 9y ago
      uh, "Welcome to nginx!" ...
  - miyayes 9y ago
    They've confirmed that they will be building extensions for other browsers and expanding BAT beyond the Brave browser. The Brave browser is, of course, the first proving ground and lets them implement the full platform without API limitations, but they've confirmed that insofar as the extension APIs are supportive, they will make extensions. (And you can still make extensions that offer partial functionality, such as the a BAT wallet for donations, but without the whole BAT Ads platform built in. You would get full functionality in apps that integrate BAT with the SDKs or if you use Brave itself.) They're also offering SDKs for other apps: e.g., mobile apps, smart TV apps, etc. See this post: https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-extending-the-bat-platform/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-ex...
- miyayes 9y ago
  They've confirmed that they will be building extensions for other browsers and expanding BAT beyond the Brave browser. The Brave browser is, of course, the first proving ground and lets them implement the full platform without API limitations, but they've confirmed that insofar as the extension APIs are supportive, they will make extensions. (And you can still make extensions that offer partial functionality, such as the a BAT wallet for donations, but without the whole BAT Ads platform built in. You would get full functionality in apps that integrate BAT with the SDKs or if you use Brave itself. Chromne API gives access to browser history, and making a BAT wallet is pretty easy.) They're also offering SDKs for other apps: e.g., mobile apps, smart TV apps, etc. See this post: https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-extending-the-bat-platform/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-ex...
mtgx 9y ago
Wouldn't it be ironic if an ad-blocking browser such as Brave gained popularity with most YouTubers because of Google's self-inflicting YouTube "ad-pocalypse"? I think it would be sweet poetry.
guiomie 9y ago
"It then displays it in the Brave Payments list, enabling the user to donate back on a monthly" ... So this will block ads on Youtube, and the creators will be compensated on donations? Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? This seems like a bad business model: make creative videos and expect people to donate so you can feed yourself.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  > Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt - 9,890 patrons - $36,214 per months in donations. https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey - 7,719 patrons - $19,439 per video in donations. Edit: And there's https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco at 14,268 patrons. His revenue is hidden but that's at least around 60k/month if not more.
  - guiomie 9y ago
    Patreon is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    These are (currently) just the really exceptional cases though. Youtube is building far more monetary value on the whole through ads.
    - jerf 9y ago
      Here's a more complete view: https://graphtreon.com/ https://graphtreon.com/ Median income in the US is ~$42,000/yr last I knew. Call it $4K to make up a bit for benefits and such. There isn't a hard-and-fast way to count because some people hide their total, but there are clearly plural hundreds of people above that line in the top 1000 [1]. There's several more hundred people making poverty-line in most of the US (which as a relative measure, I can't do a precise cut off), and before one starts moralizing about how horrible that is, remember that they are not necessarily doing this as their only job. What may not be enough to live on can still be a very very nicely paying hobby. You are certainly correct that overall, more money flows through YouTube. I am much less convinced that that's a good thing in general, though. The incentives on YouTube fluctuate a lot, but in general tend to support quantity over quality. In fact as I think about it, I wonder if Patreon is helping prop up YouTube a bit by helping the quality producers resist that; if YouTube banned alternate monetization and tried to survive just on their own quantity-over-quality metrics I wouldn't be surprised they would eventually experience an eat-your-own-seed-corn collapse. I've listened to the YouTube videos of a couple of the people chasing the quantity-over-quality treadmill that YouTube ends up putting them on to stay on top, and it's not a life I'd want or wish on anyone. [1]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators
wslh 9y ago
Is the "ad-free YouTube video experience" something that violates some Google user agreement? Just thinking that Brave is a high profile project and not a tool you download.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  I don't really see how a browser that blocks ads is any different from an extension that blocks ads.
  - explodingcamera 9y ago
    Well, it blocks adds and collects money on the behalf of others without having permission to do so...
    - thepangolino 9y ago
      And it's all done client side. What is the issue? Or does it bother Google and other online players that they can not control what is being done?
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      > blocks adds Yes, but so does uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus, etc. > collects money on the behalf of others Why would they need permission from Google to do that? That's completely unrelated to them.
      - dullgiulio 9y ago
        Because it's illegal. You write a book, I sell some home-printed copies of it and might give me some money if you claim it. It's clearly illegal.
        btym 9y ago
        That's not what's happening, though. Brave is not running a streaming video service. They aren't hosting or distributing the content. There's nothing illegal about holding money and pledging to give it to someone if they ask for it (as long as you actually do).
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Yeah this isn't going to fly with Youtube itself, they're not going to host ad-free videos so that a 3rd party can take their nontrivial portion of the ad revenue. Schemes like this are nice, but don't forget who pays for hosting, serving and promoting the content.
- Helloworldboy 9y ago
  I think you might be misunderstanding how it works. Its essentially Patreon. Will it work? Who knows. Can youtube stop it from happening? Probably not any more than they can stop Patreon.
  - mnx 9y ago
    Brave also blocks ads. I would think youtube have a better chance at suing them.
    - Helloworldboy 9y ago
      Are ad-blocking services generally sued by ad-displaying websites? I've never heard of that happening, but I could certainly be wrong.
      - detaro 9y ago
        Not generally, but it has happened. And the Brave business model of "block ads, then show our own ads instead" combined with this type of advertising is probably a clearer target than "some guy making uBlock for free".
        smokeyj 9y ago
        And what's to stop someone from creating a BATS blocker that simulates attention? Will there be a captcha like challenge?
        mccr8 9y ago
        I don't know about uBlock Origin (which is what you probably meant) but according to press articles AdBlock Plus gets paid money by Google to not block their ads, which feels at least in the ballpark to what Brave is trying to do.
kevinastone 9y ago
The screenshot shows their staging site: https://publishers-staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publishers/email_verified https://publishers-staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publisher... https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attention-token-platform-to-youtube/images/image3_1.png https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attentio...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
amelius 9y ago
Nice, but "discovery" is still handled by YouTube, and this is one of the most important factors that determine the income of any given creator. What we desperately need is a discovery system that is both fair and useful.
- BrendanEich 9y ago
  One step at a time...
joshuamorton 9y ago
(disclosure, I work at google, and previously at YouTube) This allows a user to donate to a content creator even if that creator doesn't have any way to get access the donations. That is, until youtubers start registering themselves in the payment tool, this is essentially watching someone's video, and then throwing money into a hole. With other patronage systems, like patreon, you cannot donate money until the creator has an account. To me, that feels super sketch. Edit: It reminded me to go and check my old bitcointip and altcointip accounts on reddit, on which I apparently had combined closed to $30 in BTC at today's prices, but which have both been shuttered and are now inaccessible. That's not promising.
- unfunco 9y ago
  Not being able to donate money to someone that has no way of receiving that money seems sketch, but letting money rest in the account of a third-party that has no affiliation with the receiver is fine?
  - ltc5505 9y ago
    I believe that they meant YouTube allowing you donate without a receiving account is sketchy compared to Patreon, but their sentence placement/spacing was poor an obfuscated their point.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    As far as I can tell, Brave is doing both. The money rests in a third party account that has no affiliation with the receiver, and they have no way of getting to it until they register. To put it succinctly, I think it's unethical for a platform to accept payment on my behalf without my permission. (whereas yeah, I don't consider holding money in escrow unethical)
- username223 9y ago
  Yeah, seems pretty sketchy, more or less like sending money via PayPal to random email addresses in the hope that the owner checks it for money. I respect Brave for trying, but accepting money from consumers and holding it until creators sign up to receive it is not good enough.
natural219 9y ago
Lots of people here pointing out minor, easily fixable nitpicks here, completely fail to understand how bad the ad/monetization/content world has gotten. Ad fraud is still an insanely huge problem that companies like Twitch and Youtube constantly wrestle with (former Twitch employee here). Monetization policies are still arcane, unfair, and increasingly untenable for many content producers on Youtube (google "Youtube monetization drama" if you really don't know). The whole idea that you can pay creators instead of watching ads is obviously a good one, and this is really the best attempt so far at actually solving the problem. Someone suggested implementing this as a chrome extension -- Really? They took an ambitious route with building their own browser, but that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way ads and monetization work on the internet, which if you haven't paid attention, is currently destroying everything good about the Web and eating away at the values of civic society (again, see recent congressional hearings on Russian Manipulation if you've missed the news) (Disclosure: I hold a small amount of BAT, but mostly discouraged by the finnicky nature of some of these comments that want Everything to be Perfect Overnight without realizing the scale of the problem that Brave/BAT are trying to accomplish) Edit: If you want more reading on the subject of how screwed the digital content monetization industry is, this link is also sitting on Hacker News a couple stories below this one. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-crash-but-no-one-will-say-it http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-c...
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  > that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way ads and monetization work on the internet Why? This doesn't seem obvious to me at all. In fact, I'd argue the opposite. Depending on users installing and using an entirely different browser just so they can get one feature that could easily be implemented as a browser extension is likely to be a serious obstacle to that goal.
  - natural219 9y ago
    Well. It would a while to explain the business and technological fundamentals if you don’t already understand them. Check out their whitepaper (https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePape...) for their long-term vision and truly ask youself if this is implementable as a browser extension. Browsers need disruption anyway — chrome is increasingly buggy and slow, and I trust “the person who literally invented browsers, javascript, and the modern internet” to write another one.
relatedarea 9y ago
I never watch youtube videos except for instruction videos and music videos. Why does google insist on going ads only rather than ALSO OFFERING pay per view? I have the exact same gripe with facebook—their only viable method of supporting content is itself ruining the site. Both companies are just leaving money on the floor by committing entirely to a single (dying) revenue model. This looks cool, but seems inherently untenable at actually getting the money to the content provider without the content provider working with this service.
- j_s 9y ago
  Are you not aware of Youtube Red?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - patrickaljord 9y ago
    US only.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      That seems like Youtube is leaving a lot of money on the table, though I don't understand the issues behind not offering outside the USA.
    - detaro 9y ago
      Not strictly US only, but very limited availability, yes. There were some rumors it'd launch in parts of Europe this year, but that hasn't happened.
  - w-ll 9y ago
    Speaking of Youtube Red, the way they handle if you have multiple devices is just so amazingly bad. I pay for YouTube Red so that I can play music videos on my tv all day without ads. But if I go to a video on my desktop it will stop the playing of the video on the TV as only 1 session can be had with youtube at once IF YOU PAY FOR RED. If I dropped red, and just used ad blockers I will still be available to have multiple video sessions at once. Drives me up a while and im seriously considering dropping red.
tauntz 9y ago
What happens when the receiver can not (or will not due to legal issues etc) create a Brave account to retrieve the donation? It's lost forever? Will the donator know if their donation was actually accepted or not and if not, can they get their donation back?
dboreham 9y ago
Interesting list of people on the about page. Marshall Rose for example.
splitbrain 9y ago
Isn't this basically the same as flattr?
rplnt 9y ago
This won't block ads people put in their videos. It has to be youtube that could enforce that.
skywhopper 9y ago
"The Brave browser provides an ad-free YouTube video experience. It also enables a direct monetary relationship between the content creator and their audience." Is Google party to this? And if not, how is this sustainable model? Honestly I hadn't looked into this browser previously, but I don't understand what their value proposition is, beyond handwavey promises that crypto-currency utility tokens and some future machine-learning developments can get around the ad fraud problem. But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last. ...why not? Subversion of Youtube's advertising and revenue flow sounds like a prospect which enjoys high demand and low supply at the moment.
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    Google kicked the Echo off of YouTube for TOS violations. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no-longer-available-on-amazons-echo-show/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no-longer...
    - jMyles 9y ago
      I mean, you might then argue that the Echo (and, for that matter, Amazon generally) was insufficiently surreptitious about it. If Brave can be more difficult to distinguish, it will also be more difficult to ban.
      - CodeWriter23 9y ago
        No, you might then argue that. :) Look how Uber’s behavior with paging and canceling Lyft rides during their poaching days came back to bite them in the ass. And I’m sure if Amazon’s small army of lawyers felt they had a leg to stand on with the UserAgent obfuscation route, they would do it.
recursive 9y ago
Replacing ads on the client side is normally associated with the scummiest of malware. I'm not sure how Brave has maintained even a vaguely positive reputation.
- ballenf 9y ago
  I think your statement is overbroad in the sense that adblocking is also replacing ads, in that case with empty whitespace but replacing nonetheless. Brave allows users to put something else in the whitespace. Brave is putting the ads shown (and more importantly reigning in the out of control user tracking and privacy invading bullshit) in the hands of the user. A side bonus is $ collected and available to content producers and website owners. If Brave weren't crystal clear about all -- if they marketed themselves as purely an adblocker, for example -- then I think you'd have a point. As it is, it's simply adblocking with a twist.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Because Blockchain.
- BrendanEich 9y ago
  We don’t do that, and won’t in publisher owned inventory (ad space) without the publisher as partner.
deegles 9y ago
Would I technically owe taxes on tokens received even if I'm never notified of having received them? Yes, I understand that if it's not reported it's unlikely anyone will be caught, but by the letter of the law does receiving a token mean I've received income?
- ballenf 9y ago
  If you haven't signed up, you owe about as much taxes as you would if I put your name on an envelope with $5 inside it and placed in my desk drawer.
jvehent 9y ago
Genuinely asking: how is youtube supposed to pay for their own expenses when everyone uses brave and depletes their revenue stream? Won't that kill the platform itself?
- lifeisgood99 9y ago
  Addressing the root cause of why people are leaving the platform would be a good step.
- cisanti 9y ago
  That is the problem of Google, who cares how they pay their bills? Also, if they really wanted, they could block people using Ad/Ublock on their site, but they don't. Why do you care about a multibillion dollar corp? I sure don't.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > who cares how they pay their bills? People having that attitude towards content creators is how we landed in this mess in the first place.
    - wallacoloo 9y ago
      I'd just like to point out that GP didn't directly present that attitude toward the content creators - just the host/provider, which is quite a different thing.
exabrial 9y ago
Cool, but how do you get users to install it?
four-yellow 9y ago
From their contributor terms of service on the BAT website[0]: "For each website receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform (as described more fully in Exhibit B of the BAT Terms of Sale, available at https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and-conditions/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and-conditions/). But if the website receiving votes becomes a registered Brave Publisher before the corresponding BAT is sent to the user growth pool, that website will receive such BAT as Publisher Contributions in the first Calculation Period following its registration." So if you donate money to a content creator that hasn't signed up to be a Brave publisher (and in doing so, agreed to Uphold's ToS), your donation will go to the "User Growth Pool". From their regular ToS: "Once the User Growth Fund is exhausted, it will be discontinued, and no new BAT will be created for or transferred to the User Growth Fund" So who knows where your donations will go if the content creator doesn't sign up to receive them. [0] https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service...
StavrosK 9y ago
I just tried this after reading the article here, both on the producer side and on the consumer side. On the producer side, I registered my site by adding a file to the .well-known directory, and that's it. I can now receive BAT or just USD/EUR to my bank via some service called Uphold. On the consumer side, it's nice, you top up to your browser directly (so no third-party wallets or anyone to know what you visited, hopefully) and it distributes the money you set per month to the sites you visited, based on the number of visits. I bought some BAT and can definitely see myself using this, if it were not for having to completely switch browsers (I use Firefox and plan to keep doing that). Overall, good job to the Brave team, the system seems very well-thought-out (I'm not sure about how privacy is handled, but hopefully no third party will know the sites I visited, even though I guess the Ethereum ledger is public and someone could surmise this). Too bad it requires me to switch browsers to use. EDIT: One problem I saw is with Uphold, which quotes me 51,000 BAT/BTC (and "no hidden fees"!) and then, as soon as I sent the money to buy the BAT, the "activity" page quotes 47,000 BAT/BTC. So much for no fees. EDIT 2: And now it charges me an extra $4 to withdraw, screw that. I'm not going to spend a load of money on fees so I can spend money on content, so creators can pay more fees. EDIT 3: And it doesn't even let me withdraw (the "confirm" button stays disabled). Also, I have special hate for forms that say "amount to withdraw", include no fees in that, give you no "all" option and make you guess twenty times which amount will withdraw the closest thing to all your money, while the fee keeps changing every five seconds because of fluctuations. Screw everything about this.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Isn't it due to price fluctuations?
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    No, the "add funds" page still says 51,000. Hell, 52,000 now.
    - xjia 9y ago
      That's the spread.
openasocket 9y ago
The whole thing where they collect money on behalf of someone who may not have an account and may be completely unaware of it seems unethical. It reminded me of a similar snafu with a project called tip4commit, which allows users to give bitcoin to projects they like. It also collected the money for any project on github, without an opt-in (or even an opt-out) mechanism for the project maintainers. Here's the issue where a lot of this got brought up: https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127 https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127
tlrobinson 9y ago
What is the technical advantage of Brave using a new token like BAT instead of directly using an existing cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that millions of people already hold, and will likely be less volatile in the long term? I feel like a lot of ICOs are simply used to try to capture a piece of the cryptocurrency/ICO hype and avoid securities regulations, but there’s no advtange to users.
- RoboTeddy 9y ago
  I don't see a technical advantage either. But I wouldn't say there's no advantage to users-- an ICO can let the founders (a) raise funds, and (b) give them a financial incentive for the project to succeed. So in theory, ICOs can help users win because they can lead to great products that otherwise wouldn't exist. (That said, a lot of teams/projects are total junk.)
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    That might be true in some cases (Brendan Eich, though?) but making your product more complex for the user just to raise easy money seems like a poor trade-off. On top of that many ICOs seem to have unjustified valuations and reduced oversight from investors vs traditional fundraising.
- BrendanEich 9y ago
  See https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/862022787640082432 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/862022787640082432 (from before our token sale). We floated a User Growth Pool (UGP) of 300M tokens + 60M+ in reserve, created by fiat. These tokens were created before the sale and not sold. They're fungible, indistinguishable from other BAT created pre-sale for lockup to team & advisors, and from the one billion BAT sold on 5/31. This idea was inspired by social credit currency, issued to citizens to endow them with funds. It can't be done with existing cryptocurrencies unless someone rich does it out of charity. The UGP has notional value between $40M and $110M. No moneybags in sight was volunteering to donate that much BTC or ETH to us. We had two goals with the sale: endow the UGP, and fund the project. BAT is an ERC20 token so has many decimal places of fractional precision. As we grow, gain users who contribute starting from $0 cost to the user (via grants from the UGP, and even matching contributions for some months), prototype and ship user-paying private ads, and add other apps, BAT should become more valuable and our initial and matching grants can reduce to keep about the same value in USD or other fiats ($5 for initial grant, still working out matching details). Hope this helps. We're playing the long game here. If the ecosystem expands and Ethereum solves scaling and anonymity on-chain, we will have the only decentralized, user-first and user-private/ZKP-anonymous funding model for the Web. Here's a pie chart of token holders, where you can see the UGP+reserves, Bittrex (an exchange with BAT held for liquidity provisioning), the team+advisor lockup, and smaller accounts: https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x0d8775f648430679a709e98d2b0cb6250d2887ef https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x0d8775f6484306...
praulv 9y ago
Coincidentally, I was just looking at MetaMask which links to Brave. Can someone explain LI5YO how they're related? I understand MetaMask is a browser extension to access distributed transactional content on Ethereum. Not sure how Brave monetisation relates to that.
- BrendanEich 9y ago
  We support MetaMask, as a chromium extension. It's really for developers and power users of Ethereum, not part of our BAT platform.

321 points by Helloworldboy 9y ago

proaralyst 9y ago

I think this is a service I'd use if it were available as an extension rather than a browser in its own right.

glenstein 9y ago
One attention-crypto as a browser extension is WildSpark by Synereo: https://wildspark.me https://wildspark.me I have no affiliation, I have zero of whatever their coin is, but I randomly signed up for their mailing list a while back out curiosity.
Ajedi32 9y ago
Maybe consider Flattr? From what I can tell it does basically the same thing: https://flattr.com/contributors https://flattr.com/contributors
- proaralyst 9y ago
  And in another bonus doesn't appear to require tokens.
- hiq 9y ago
  It does the same with much more overhead for the user as far as I can tell. The point of Brave is to have everything working behind the scene for the user, so no friction.
  - detaro 9y ago
    What's the "much more overhead"? As far as I know, in the current state of Brave you have to buy tokens, just like you put money in flattr. In the future model, Brave will show you ads vs flattr taking money directly - is that much more overhead? (The implementations might differ in other important things, e.g. privacy or fee structure, but the basic user attention model seems similar enough to me)
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      Flattr _used_ to require the user to click a button to indicate they like a particular page and want to support its creator. I assume GP is simply unaware that that's not how Flattr works anymore. Flattr 2.0 works more like Brave does; the user pays a monthly subscription, and Flattr just automatically distributes those funds to creators based on what sites the user views most often that month.
      - hiq 9y ago
        I stand corrected, I didn't know about this new version.
- mtgx 9y ago
  I don't think Flattr will succeed over cryptocurrencies such as BAT/STEEM.
decentralised 9y ago
You should really try the browser itself, partly because it will pay you to watch some ads, and partly because it will respect your privacy.
- proaralyst 9y ago
  But I trust Mozilla more with my privacy and I don't want to watch ads at all!
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    This is why Brave has a limited future as it is. You can't pay me cents to pick a worse browser. It's like the days when there were those pay to surf companies. The promise of money is nice, but most end users don't benefit that much from it. There's a lot more incentive for the company for their product to work than there is for the users to adopt it.
    - decentralised 9y ago
      I'm not deeply familiar with Brave's roadmap but my understanding is that the BAT tokens you'd receive from watching ads could also be used to tip content providers similar to what can be done in Steemit.
  - hiq 9y ago
    This, so much this. Maybe I could reconsider if they paid me more than a few dollars per good (according to me) advertisement, but I doubt that this will be the case. Until then, I will stick to ad-blocking.
    - decentralised 9y ago
      How about this, a system will show you ads and you can chose to skip or stop if you don't like them. In any case for however many seconds you endured, you get paid.
nfin 9y ago
Here one item of the Brave-FAQ: Why build a browser and not extensions for top browsers? Extensions face API and performance limits. Our own browser lets us put our best foot forward on speed and deep integration of private ad-tech. We may do extensions if our users find themselves browsing in other browsers often. => give them feedback if you’re interested
- pwaai 9y ago
  > Why build a browser and not extensions for top browsers? I happen to be working on this right now http://browsercoin.com http://browsercoin.com, if anybody is interested in beta testing it out, my email is in my profile. > Extensions face API and performance limits. Our own browser lets us put our best foot forward on speed and deep integration of private ad-tech. We may do extensions if our users find themselves browsing in other browsers often. Basically, their FAQ answer is debatable because the Chrome API is more than enough to support a Patreonesque model, if you have uBlock and other privacy focused extension, you don't even need to download a heavy browser client. Hence the name BrowserCoin, I'd be open to feedbacks on what you would like to see happen with it.
  - j_s 9y ago
    I clicked; might want to update your site from the nginx welcome page.
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      > "I happen to be working on this right now" Sounds like pwaai is literally working on browsercoin right now! :)
  - edm0nd 9y ago
    uh, "Welcome to nginx!" ...
- miyayes 9y ago
  They've confirmed that they will be building extensions for other browsers and expanding BAT beyond the Brave browser. The Brave browser is, of course, the first proving ground and lets them implement the full platform without API limitations, but they've confirmed that insofar as the extension APIs are supportive, they will make extensions. (And you can still make extensions that offer partial functionality, such as the a BAT wallet for donations, but without the whole BAT Ads platform built in. You would get full functionality in apps that integrate BAT with the SDKs or if you use Brave itself.) They're also offering SDKs for other apps: e.g., mobile apps, smart TV apps, etc. See this post: https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-extending-the-bat-platform/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-ex...
miyayes 9y ago
They've confirmed that they will be building extensions for other browsers and expanding BAT beyond the Brave browser. The Brave browser is, of course, the first proving ground and lets them implement the full platform without API limitations, but they've confirmed that insofar as the extension APIs are supportive, they will make extensions. (And you can still make extensions that offer partial functionality, such as the a BAT wallet for donations, but without the whole BAT Ads platform built in. You would get full functionality in apps that integrate BAT with the SDKs or if you use Brave itself. Chromne API gives access to browser history, and making a BAT wallet is pretty easy.) They're also offering SDKs for other apps: e.g., mobile apps, smart TV apps, etc. See this post: https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-extending-the-bat-platform/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/driving-user-adoption-and-ex...

mtgx 9y ago

Wouldn't it be ironic if an ad-blocking browser such as Brave gained popularity with most YouTubers because of Google's self-inflicting YouTube "ad-pocalypse"? I think it would be sweet poetry.

guiomie 9y ago

"It then displays it in the Brave Payments list, enabling the user to donate back on a monthly" ... So this will block ads on Youtube, and the creators will be compensated on donations? Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? This seems like a bad business model: make creative videos and expect people to donate so you can feed yourself.

Raphmedia 9y ago
> Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt - 9,890 patrons - $36,214 per months in donations. https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey - 7,719 patrons - $19,439 per video in donations. Edit: And there's https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco at 14,268 patrons. His revenue is hidden but that's at least around 60k/month if not more.
- guiomie 9y ago
  Patreon is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  These are (currently) just the really exceptional cases though. Youtube is building far more monetary value on the whole through ads.
  - jerf 9y ago
    Here's a more complete view: https://graphtreon.com/ https://graphtreon.com/ Median income in the US is ~$42,000/yr last I knew. Call it $4K to make up a bit for benefits and such. There isn't a hard-and-fast way to count because some people hide their total, but there are clearly plural hundreds of people above that line in the top 1000 [1]. There's several more hundred people making poverty-line in most of the US (which as a relative measure, I can't do a precise cut off), and before one starts moralizing about how horrible that is, remember that they are not necessarily doing this as their only job. What may not be enough to live on can still be a very very nicely paying hobby. You are certainly correct that overall, more money flows through YouTube. I am much less convinced that that's a good thing in general, though. The incentives on YouTube fluctuate a lot, but in general tend to support quantity over quality. In fact as I think about it, I wonder if Patreon is helping prop up YouTube a bit by helping the quality producers resist that; if YouTube banned alternate monetization and tried to survive just on their own quantity-over-quality metrics I wouldn't be surprised they would eventually experience an eat-your-own-seed-corn collapse. I've listened to the YouTube videos of a couple of the people chasing the quantity-over-quality treadmill that YouTube ends up putting them on to stay on top, and it's not a life I'd want or wish on anyone. [1]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators

wslh 9y ago

Is the "ad-free YouTube video experience" something that violates some Google user agreement? Just thinking that Brave is a high profile project and not a tool you download.

Ajedi32 9y ago
I don't really see how a browser that blocks ads is any different from an extension that blocks ads.
- explodingcamera 9y ago
  Well, it blocks adds and collects money on the behalf of others without having permission to do so...
  - thepangolino 9y ago
    And it's all done client side. What is the issue? Or does it bother Google and other online players that they can not control what is being done?
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    > blocks adds Yes, but so does uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus, etc. > collects money on the behalf of others Why would they need permission from Google to do that? That's completely unrelated to them.
    - dullgiulio 9y ago
      Because it's illegal. You write a book, I sell some home-printed copies of it and might give me some money if you claim it. It's clearly illegal.
      - btym 9y ago
        That's not what's happening, though. Brave is not running a streaming video service. They aren't hosting or distributing the content. There's nothing illegal about holding money and pledging to give it to someone if they ask for it (as long as you actually do).

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

Yeah this isn't going to fly with Youtube itself, they're not going to host ad-free videos so that a 3rd party can take their nontrivial portion of the ad revenue. Schemes like this are nice, but don't forget who pays for hosting, serving and promoting the content.

Helloworldboy 9y ago
I think you might be misunderstanding how it works. Its essentially Patreon. Will it work? Who knows. Can youtube stop it from happening? Probably not any more than they can stop Patreon.
- mnx 9y ago
  Brave also blocks ads. I would think youtube have a better chance at suing them.
  - Helloworldboy 9y ago
    Are ad-blocking services generally sued by ad-displaying websites? I've never heard of that happening, but I could certainly be wrong.
    - detaro 9y ago
      Not generally, but it has happened. And the Brave business model of "block ads, then show our own ads instead" combined with this type of advertising is probably a clearer target than "some guy making uBlock for free".
      - smokeyj 9y ago
        And what's to stop someone from creating a BATS blocker that simulates attention? Will there be a captcha like challenge?
      - mccr8 9y ago
        I don't know about uBlock Origin (which is what you probably meant) but according to press articles AdBlock Plus gets paid money by Google to not block their ads, which feels at least in the ballpark to what Brave is trying to do.

kevinastone 9y ago

The screenshot shows their staging site: https://publishers-staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publishers/email_verified https://publishers-staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publisher... https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attention-token-platform-to-youtube/images/image3_1.png https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attentio...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

amelius 9y ago

Nice, but "discovery" is still handled by YouTube, and this is one of the most important factors that determine the income of any given creator. What we desperately need is a discovery system that is both fair and useful.

BrendanEich 9y ago
One step at a time...

joshuamorton 9y ago

(disclosure, I work at google, and previously at YouTube) This allows a user to donate to a content creator even if that creator doesn't have any way to get access the donations. That is, until youtubers start registering themselves in the payment tool, this is essentially watching someone's video, and then throwing money into a hole. With other patronage systems, like patreon, you cannot donate money until the creator has an account. To me, that feels super sketch. Edit: It reminded me to go and check my old bitcointip and altcointip accounts on reddit, on which I apparently had combined closed to $30 in BTC at today's prices, but which have both been shuttered and are now inaccessible. That's not promising.

unfunco 9y ago
Not being able to donate money to someone that has no way of receiving that money seems sketch, but letting money rest in the account of a third-party that has no affiliation with the receiver is fine?
- ltc5505 9y ago
  I believe that they meant YouTube allowing you donate without a receiving account is sketchy compared to Patreon, but their sentence placement/spacing was poor an obfuscated their point.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  As far as I can tell, Brave is doing both. The money rests in a third party account that has no affiliation with the receiver, and they have no way of getting to it until they register. To put it succinctly, I think it's unethical for a platform to accept payment on my behalf without my permission. (whereas yeah, I don't consider holding money in escrow unethical)
username223 9y ago
Yeah, seems pretty sketchy, more or less like sending money via PayPal to random email addresses in the hope that the owner checks it for money. I respect Brave for trying, but accepting money from consumers and holding it until creators sign up to receive it is not good enough.

natural219 9y ago

Lots of people here pointing out minor, easily fixable nitpicks here, completely fail to understand how bad the ad/monetization/content world has gotten. Ad fraud is still an insanely huge problem that companies like Twitch and Youtube constantly wrestle with (former Twitch employee here). Monetization policies are still arcane, unfair, and increasingly untenable for many content producers on Youtube (google "Youtube monetization drama" if you really don't know). The whole idea that you can pay creators instead of watching ads is obviously a good one, and this is really the best attempt so far at actually solving the problem. Someone suggested implementing this as a chrome extension -- Really? They took an ambitious route with building their own browser, but that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way ads and monetization work on the internet, which if you haven't paid attention, is currently destroying everything good about the Web and eating away at the values of civic society (again, see recent congressional hearings on Russian Manipulation if you've missed the news) (Disclosure: I hold a small amount of BAT, but mostly discouraged by the finnicky nature of some of these comments that want Everything to be Perfect Overnight without realizing the scale of the problem that Brave/BAT are trying to accomplish) Edit: If you want more reading on the subject of how screwed the digital content monetization industry is, this link is also sitting on Hacker News a couple stories below this one. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-crash-but-no-one-will-say-it http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-c...

Ajedi32 9y ago
> that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way ads and monetization work on the internet Why? This doesn't seem obvious to me at all. In fact, I'd argue the opposite. Depending on users installing and using an entirely different browser just so they can get one feature that could easily be implemented as a browser extension is likely to be a serious obstacle to that goal.
- natural219 9y ago
  Well. It would a while to explain the business and technological fundamentals if you don’t already understand them. Check out their whitepaper (https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePape...) for their long-term vision and truly ask youself if this is implementable as a browser extension. Browsers need disruption anyway — chrome is increasingly buggy and slow, and I trust “the person who literally invented browsers, javascript, and the modern internet” to write another one.

relatedarea 9y ago

I never watch youtube videos except for instruction videos and music videos. Why does google insist on going ads only rather than ALSO OFFERING pay per view? I have the exact same gripe with facebook—their only viable method of supporting content is itself ruining the site. Both companies are just leaving money on the floor by committing entirely to a single (dying) revenue model. This looks cool, but seems inherently untenable at actually getting the money to the content provider without the content provider working with this service.

j_s 9y ago
Are you not aware of Youtube Red?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  US only.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    That seems like Youtube is leaving a lot of money on the table, though I don't understand the issues behind not offering outside the USA.
  - detaro 9y ago
    Not strictly US only, but very limited availability, yes. There were some rumors it'd launch in parts of Europe this year, but that hasn't happened.
- w-ll 9y ago
  Speaking of Youtube Red, the way they handle if you have multiple devices is just so amazingly bad. I pay for YouTube Red so that I can play music videos on my tv all day without ads. But if I go to a video on my desktop it will stop the playing of the video on the TV as only 1 session can be had with youtube at once IF YOU PAY FOR RED. If I dropped red, and just used ad blockers I will still be available to have multiple video sessions at once. Drives me up a while and im seriously considering dropping red.

tauntz 9y ago

What happens when the receiver can not (or will not due to legal issues etc) create a Brave account to retrieve the donation? It's lost forever? Will the donator know if their donation was actually accepted or not and if not, can they get their donation back?

dboreham 9y ago

Interesting list of people on the about page. Marshall Rose for example.

splitbrain 9y ago

Isn't this basically the same as flattr?

rplnt 9y ago

This won't block ads people put in their videos. It has to be youtube that could enforce that.

skywhopper 9y ago

"The Brave browser provides an ad-free YouTube video experience. It also enables a direct monetary relationship between the content creator and their audience." Is Google party to this? And if not, how is this sustainable model? Honestly I hadn't looked into this browser previously, but I don't understand what their value proposition is, beyond handwavey promises that crypto-currency utility tokens and some future machine-learning developments can get around the ad fraud problem. But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last.

jMyles 9y ago
> But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last. ...why not? Subversion of Youtube's advertising and revenue flow sounds like a prospect which enjoys high demand and low supply at the moment.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Google kicked the Echo off of YouTube for TOS violations. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no-longer-available-on-amazons-echo-show/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no-longer...
  - jMyles 9y ago
    I mean, you might then argue that the Echo (and, for that matter, Amazon generally) was insufficiently surreptitious about it. If Brave can be more difficult to distinguish, it will also be more difficult to ban.
    - CodeWriter23 9y ago
      No, you might then argue that. :) Look how Uber’s behavior with paging and canceling Lyft rides during their poaching days came back to bite them in the ass. And I’m sure if Amazon’s small army of lawyers felt they had a leg to stand on with the UserAgent obfuscation route, they would do it.

recursive 9y ago

Replacing ads on the client side is normally associated with the scummiest of malware. I'm not sure how Brave has maintained even a vaguely positive reputation.

ballenf 9y ago
I think your statement is overbroad in the sense that adblocking is also replacing ads, in that case with empty whitespace but replacing nonetheless. Brave allows users to put something else in the whitespace. Brave is putting the ads shown (and more importantly reigning in the out of control user tracking and privacy invading bullshit) in the hands of the user. A side bonus is $ collected and available to content producers and website owners. If Brave weren't crystal clear about all -- if they marketed themselves as purely an adblocker, for example -- then I think you'd have a point. As it is, it's simply adblocking with a twist.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Because Blockchain.
BrendanEich 9y ago
We don’t do that, and won’t in publisher owned inventory (ad space) without the publisher as partner.

deegles 9y ago

Would I technically owe taxes on tokens received even if I'm never notified of having received them? Yes, I understand that if it's not reported it's unlikely anyone will be caught, but by the letter of the law does receiving a token mean I've received income?

ballenf 9y ago
If you haven't signed up, you owe about as much taxes as you would if I put your name on an envelope with $5 inside it and placed in my desk drawer.

jvehent 9y ago

Genuinely asking: how is youtube supposed to pay for their own expenses when everyone uses brave and depletes their revenue stream? Won't that kill the platform itself?

lifeisgood99 9y ago
Addressing the root cause of why people are leaving the platform would be a good step.
cisanti 9y ago
That is the problem of Google, who cares how they pay their bills? Also, if they really wanted, they could block people using Ad/Ublock on their site, but they don't. Why do you care about a multibillion dollar corp? I sure don't.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > who cares how they pay their bills? People having that attitude towards content creators is how we landed in this mess in the first place.
  - wallacoloo 9y ago
    I'd just like to point out that GP didn't directly present that attitude toward the content creators - just the host/provider, which is quite a different thing.

exabrial 9y ago

Cool, but how do you get users to install it?

four-yellow 9y ago

From their contributor terms of service on the BAT website[0]: "For each website receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform (as described more fully in Exhibit B of the BAT Terms of Sale, available at https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and-conditions/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and-conditions/). But if the website receiving votes becomes a registered Brave Publisher before the corresponding BAT is sent to the user growth pool, that website will receive such BAT as Publisher Contributions in the first Calculation Period following its registration." So if you donate money to a content creator that hasn't signed up to be a Brave publisher (and in doing so, agreed to Uphold's ToS), your donation will go to the "User Growth Pool". From their regular ToS: "Once the User Growth Fund is exhausted, it will be discontinued, and no new BAT will be created for or transferred to the User Growth Fund" So who knows where your donations will go if the content creator doesn't sign up to receive them. [0] https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service...

StavrosK 9y ago

I just tried this after reading the article here, both on the producer side and on the consumer side. On the producer side, I registered my site by adding a file to the .well-known directory, and that's it. I can now receive BAT or just USD/EUR to my bank via some service called Uphold. On the consumer side, it's nice, you top up to your browser directly (so no third-party wallets or anyone to know what you visited, hopefully) and it distributes the money you set per month to the sites you visited, based on the number of visits. I bought some BAT and can definitely see myself using this, if it were not for having to completely switch browsers (I use Firefox and plan to keep doing that). Overall, good job to the Brave team, the system seems very well-thought-out (I'm not sure about how privacy is handled, but hopefully no third party will know the sites I visited, even though I guess the Ethereum ledger is public and someone could surmise this). Too bad it requires me to switch browsers to use. EDIT: One problem I saw is with Uphold, which quotes me 51,000 BAT/BTC (and "no hidden fees"!) and then, as soon as I sent the money to buy the BAT, the "activity" page quotes 47,000 BAT/BTC. So much for no fees. EDIT 2: And now it charges me an extra $4 to withdraw, screw that. I'm not going to spend a load of money on fees so I can spend money on content, so creators can pay more fees. EDIT 3: And it doesn't even let me withdraw (the "confirm" button stays disabled). Also, I have special hate for forms that say "amount to withdraw", include no fees in that, give you no "all" option and make you guess twenty times which amount will withdraw the closest thing to all your money, while the fee keeps changing every five seconds because of fluctuations. Screw everything about this.

Kiro 9y ago
Isn't it due to price fluctuations?
- StavrosK 9y ago
  No, the "add funds" page still says 51,000. Hell, 52,000 now.
  - xjia 9y ago
    That's the spread.

openasocket 9y ago

The whole thing where they collect money on behalf of someone who may not have an account and may be completely unaware of it seems unethical. It reminded me of a similar snafu with a project called tip4commit, which allows users to give bitcoin to projects they like. It also collected the money for any project on github, without an opt-in (or even an opt-out) mechanism for the project maintainers. Here's the issue where a lot of this got brought up: https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127 https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127

tlrobinson 9y ago

What is the technical advantage of Brave using a new token like BAT instead of directly using an existing cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that millions of people already hold, and will likely be less volatile in the long term? I feel like a lot of ICOs are simply used to try to capture a piece of the cryptocurrency/ICO hype and avoid securities regulations, but there’s no advtange to users.

RoboTeddy 9y ago
I don't see a technical advantage either. But I wouldn't say there's no advantage to users-- an ICO can let the founders (a) raise funds, and (b) give them a financial incentive for the project to succeed. So in theory, ICOs can help users win because they can lead to great products that otherwise wouldn't exist. (That said, a lot of teams/projects are total junk.)
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  That might be true in some cases (Brendan Eich, though?) but making your product more complex for the user just to raise easy money seems like a poor trade-off. On top of that many ICOs seem to have unjustified valuations and reduced oversight from investors vs traditional fundraising.
BrendanEich 9y ago
See https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/862022787640082432 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/862022787640082432 (from before our token sale). We floated a User Growth Pool (UGP) of 300M tokens + 60M+ in reserve, created by fiat. These tokens were created before the sale and not sold. They're fungible, indistinguishable from other BAT created pre-sale for lockup to team & advisors, and from the one billion BAT sold on 5/31. This idea was inspired by social credit currency, issued to citizens to endow them with funds. It can't be done with existing cryptocurrencies unless someone rich does it out of charity. The UGP has notional value between $40M and $110M. No moneybags in sight was volunteering to donate that much BTC or ETH to us. We had two goals with the sale: endow the UGP, and fund the project. BAT is an ERC20 token so has many decimal places of fractional precision. As we grow, gain users who contribute starting from $0 cost to the user (via grants from the UGP, and even matching contributions for some months), prototype and ship user-paying private ads, and add other apps, BAT should become more valuable and our initial and matching grants can reduce to keep about the same value in USD or other fiats ($5 for initial grant, still working out matching details). Hope this helps. We're playing the long game here. If the ecosystem expands and Ethereum solves scaling and anonymity on-chain, we will have the only decentralized, user-first and user-private/ZKP-anonymous funding model for the Web. Here's a pie chart of token holders, where you can see the UGP+reserves, Bittrex (an exchange with BAT held for liquidity provisioning), the team+advisor lockup, and smaller accounts: https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x0d8775f648430679a709e98d2b0cb6250d2887ef https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x0d8775f6484306...

praulv 9y ago

Coincidentally, I was just looking at MetaMask which links to Brave. Can someone explain LI5YO how they're related? I understand MetaMask is a browser extension to access distributed transactional content on Ethereum. Not sure how Brave monetisation relates to that.

BrendanEich 9y ago
We support MetaMask, as a chromium extension. It's really for developers and power users of Ethereum, not part of our BAT platform.