Crypto Wizards AMA With BAT and Brave Browser
Guest: Luke Mulks (VP Business OPS)
introduction:
First of all Can you introduce yourself to us?
Ans:Happy to! I’m Luke Mulks, VP of Biz Ops @ Brave and BAT — started working with Brave in Mar 2016, after a career in publishing, startups and advertising. My prior role in advertising was working with all the major adtech stacks, and with some of the biggest media players in the web (NFL, NBC/Comcast, MLS, Warner Brothers…) — I saw Google eat up the advertising space, and move into content. When I saw Brave in early 2016, it was the first real chance to take on bigtech that was really aiming to win, so I started working with them. By late 2016, I was full time at Brave, was a co-author of the BAT White Paper, and oversee the BAT Community. We began bringing proofs of concept to market that included crypto and privacy, and I moved into business development, and as those scaled, business operations. I primarily work on business strategy/dev/ops on Brave / BAT and am putting a lot of time into the Brave Wallet and BAT Community.
1) Can you give a brief explanation about ‘BAT’ .What popped up in your mind to create such a project in this Space?
Ans:At Brave, we introduced a proof of concept for a model called Brave Payments in Sept 2016, which used bitcoin and provided an easy way for users to contribute bitcoin to publishers (with plans on introducing ads that were private and users could earn from). We ran into some issues with bitcoin scaling as more people adopted the proof of concept, which was also right in the middle of the blockwars. All of the sudden, a user would have to input $9-$10 in order to contribute $5 to publishers.
When we saw what ethereum was bringing to market, the ability to tokenize units and build applications on the blockchain, we pivoted to create BAT — with a very distinct and novel use case as the unit of account for a user-first attention economy.
We went after the advertising use case first because there was a huge need for change in digital advertising and publisher monetization.
Brave starts by blocking 3rd party ads and trackers that are bad for privacy and intrusive.
Then we introduce the ability for users to opt-in to Brave Rewards, to view Brave Ads, which are private, and earn 70% of the rev share in the form of BAT.
Creators can verify, and accept BAT from users, who can either tip Creators or automatically contribute to them based on their attention, measured locally in their browser.
To date, we’ve had +10 million users opt-in to earn BAT with Brave Rewards, +1.6M creators verify to accept BAT, and have run thousands of Brave Ads campaigns. https://basicattentiontoken.org/growth
2) What are your main features and advantages that discern you from other projects?
Ans:Brave was one of the few projects that had working product on desktop and mobile prior to our BAT token launch in May 2017.
What separates us, and where we have an advantage, is with being in a position as a browser to onboard millions of new people into crypto. Typically, the bar of entry for getting into crypto is pretty high, and primarily more technical people get into it.
With Brave and BAT, we’ve made it easy for a user to install the browser, and in a few clicks, begin passively earning crypto with their attention.
We’ve also introduced advertisers and creators/publishers to crypto, and have made it easy for them to get started.
As we’ve grown, we’re now at nearly 60 million monthly active users, and are working to take the learnings from Brave Rewards and the ad model to apply to our multichain self-custodial Brave Wallet. Every user in Brave now has a Brave Wallet, and we’re working to introduce BAT into more cross-chain and on-chain utility cases.
Brave is the only user-first gateway to web3 for the masses, and we’re stoked to make crypto easy for everyday people to access.
Brave:
- Private Browser
- Private Search
- Web3 Wallet
- Ability to earn and contribute BAT
…to millions
3)Now tell us about Brave wallet and How Brave and BAT Works Together and what are the incentives provide to users From this?
Ans:Brave is a fast, private browser that puts users first — meaning that when the team is building, we’re always keeping the interest of the user in mind.
This means we block attempts to collect user data from companies on the web, which makes brave very fast and clean to browse with.
The Brave Wallet is a native wallet, directly built into the core browser, making it more secure and seamless than extension based wallets.
Brave Wallet is multichain, supporting ethereum, EVMs, Filecoin, Solana and more.
Brave Wallet includes Buy options to buy crypto with fiat on the chains above, and also includes decentralized Swaps on ethereum, BSC, Fantom, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche C-Chain, Celo and more to come.
Users can explore web3 DApps directly from the web browser, on desktop and mobile.
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Brave Rewards is the ecosystem we launched support for Creators in Sept 2017, and for users with Brave Ads in April 2019.
Advertisers buy BAT-powered Brave Ads campaigns.
Users opt-in to Brave Ads, and earn 70% of the revenue share for the ads that they view.
Users can then automatically contribute or tip the +1.6 million verified Brave Creators that accept BAT, buy gift cards, and do more things with BAT that we have in the pipeline.
We’re also working on incentives for BAT with the Brave Wallet, which we’re going to be releasing in the months ahead.
4) Now Share us about your Native token, What are the some of utlities of $BAT Token in Your Ecosystem? And if possible share to us the Tokenomics
Ans:Sure thing — so the use case we brought to market was around users, creators and advertisers:
Advertisers fuel ad campaigns with BAT or USD.
In the case where advertisers buy with USD, Brave buys back BAT to distribute to users for the 70% rev share (example https://twitter.com/lukemulks/status/1559955097240514560 )
Users earn BAT, in the form of user rev share of 70% for every ad they view.
Users then contribute BAT to Creators (if they wish), for the content that they create.
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This was just the initial use case we took to market; BAT is so much more, as BAT is the unit of account for the attention economy.
BAT organically was introduced into defi in early 2020, in MakerDAO, Compound, Aave and others.
In Mar 2021, BAT was introduced cross-chain into BSC defi.
We began making partnerships with gaming companies (Splinterlands, Gala Games) to introduce BAT utility into NFT purchases, native in-game token use, etc. through pilots.
Now, with the multichain Brave Wallet, and the ability for BAT to go cross-chain where supported, we’re aiming to introduce BAT into Defi, NFT Marketplaces and eventually Metaverse use cases on the chains that are supported in the Brave Wallet.
1.5 billion BAT were generated in our May 31 2017 token launch, and there’s a 1.5 billion cap / max supply. We aren’t making any more BAT.
1 billion BAT were sold in our token sale on 5/31/17
200M BAT were put in a dev pool, with a 6mo unlock, that became available in Nov 2017.
300M BAT were allocated to a user growth pool.
If you check https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token — you can see that +1.4B of the 1.5B total bat are in circulation.
As Brave scales adoption and use of BAT in our ecosystem, and through secondary market utility, BAT becomes more fractional over time.
5) How long has it taken to develop this project? What is BAT’s roadmap for the future? Are there any exciting developments for the project underway?
Ans:We launched BAT in our token launch on 5/31/2017
We swapped out bitcoin for BAT in Brave Payments (which became Brave Rewards) in Sep/Oct 2017 (within 6mo of token sale, we had BAT utility in Brave)
April 2019, Brave Ads became available, for users to earn BAT.
We introduced a BAT Roadmap 2.0 last year, which we’ve been executing against. https://brave.com/bat-roadmap-2-0/
Every year, we publish a State of the BAT post, where we catch up people on progress with BAT utility, and put out our focus for the year. Our 2022 State of the BAT is available here: https://brave.com/state-of-the-bat-2022/
And our 2022 focus for BAT is here, in the screenshot.
Twitter Segment:
1.What problem does your BAT Project focus on solving? What is the innovation you bring to the DEFI AND Blockchain industry?
Ans:BAT is *the* unit of account for the user-first Attention Economy. If there are pixels that are accountable, whether that’s with advertising, content, finance or NFTs and gaming, BAT has a home in it.
Users can earn BAT, swap for BAT, buy BAT and then use in defi protocols to earn, or through partnerships like the one we recently announced with Magic Eden, introduce the ability to mint NFTs with BAT.
We’ve got over 10M users earning BAT in Brave Rewards, BAT is the 12th most distributed token by on-chain holders on ethereum (according to etherscan.io) and we’re increasing holder counts cross-chain. We’re up and running, but are also just getting started when it comes to scaling the potential and attention utility.
You’re still early, Anon.
2: What type of developments do you have coming in the near future? Do you have any juicy news for us? What does your roadmap look like from here on out?
By @TereNam01
Ans:
2022 focus in screenshot. Very bullish for our upcoming 1st BAT NFT mint on Solana through our partnership with Magic Eden. That’s landing mid-Sept, and am really pumped for more and more NFT utility with BAT.
3: Where can I buy your token now? What is your current contract and how can I buy them? Do you have any other DeFI features?
Ans:BAT is listed on +200 exchanges, and is available to swap and buy in the Brave Wallet.
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token#markets
If you’re a brave user (https://brave.com) you can onboard with your Brave Wallet (brave://wallet) and buy BAT through Wyre, Ramp Network or swap ETH or other ERC20 tokens for BAT in our Swap feature.
4: Can you explain how is your Tokenomics Distribution? How many tokens Will be minted ? And How many tokens Will be locked by the team?
Ans:Token Launch was on 5/31/2017, and was a one-time event.
total bat supply: 1.5B
dev pool (unlocked 11/2017): 200M
user growth pool: 300M
current circulating supply: +1.4B of total 1.5B BAT supply.
No lockup.
No presale.
No shenanigans
5: Can you talk about the revenue models of the BAT project and the Brave browser, and how the project is making a profit? How is the project carried out?
By @norm_life
Ans:[In reply to Arshad Airtel]
Brave has diversified revenue streams:
- Brave Premium products: Talk Premium, Premium Search, VPN, monthly recurring revenue.
- Brave Ads: 30% rev on Brave Ads
- Brave Wallet: 0.875% processing fee on Swaps, 1% processing fee on fiat-crypto onramps, rev shares on upcoming NFT partnerships on CPA basis, etc.
We’ve scaled Brave Ads from ~$50K/mo in April 2019, to multiple millions in revenue per month. We include active campaign counts and Brave BAT purchases that we post on https://brave.com/transparency
Live Ask:
1.So Brave have its own browser now and wallet. So when can we expect an exchange platform and blockchain integration?
Ans:Brave Wallet currently supports Ethereum, EVM, Solana, Filecoin on desktop and mobile — has fiat to crypto onramps through our buy widget and has decentralized swaps integrated.
2.According to the roadmap, what is your most important next priority? Do you have enough funds and strong community to achieve the goal?oky Thanks?
Ans:NFT gallery support and dapp support for solana on mobile; project has funding, and we’re generating revenue monthly and growing.
3.How many active users does the platform currently have? How many users do you expect to use your platform by the end of this year 2022? What goals have you set for yourselves in this regard?
Ans:59 million monthly active users, 19m daily active users https://brave.com/transparency
4.People usually hate ads and even install adblocker on their browser so why does Brave incentivize ads?
Ans:Brave brings private advertising that doesn’t track users, leak their info to companies, and the ability to reward users with their attention. Our ads ecosystem is also opt-in, so users in Brave have ad blocking by default.
5.My important question
Many projects have problems with UI / UX and this one turns off new users. How do you plan to improve the interaction with new users and with users outside the crypto space?Thank,s sir,,,
Ans:With 59 million monthly active users, we’re aiming to take the learnings we have from getting +10 million opted in to Brave Rewards and earning BAT, and apply them to self-custody with our multichain Brave Wallet. We’re also working to put standard payment methods near crypto options in the Wallet to help provide easy ways to onramp for the crypto curious people
If you would like to learn more about Brave And BAT, here are some useful links for you:
Website
BAT:https://basicattentiontoken.org/
Brave:https://brave.com/
Twitter
BAT:https://twitter.com/attentiontoken?s=21&t=09ceKY9YKSHY6haJTWEGXQ
Brave:https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Medium:https://medium.com/@AttentionToken
Discord:http://discord.gg/batbrigade