Basic Attention(BAT)

Overview

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an ERC-20 utility token issued on Ethereum as part of a decentralized digital advertising platform. The project held an initial coin offering on May 31, 2017, reportedly raising around $35 million in under 30 seconds, and was created to address opacity and fraud in online advertising. Its core model has advertisers pay BAT to publishers and users in exchange for user attention.

BAT is closely tied to Brave, an open-source, privacy-focused web browser that blocks trackers and malware. Ad matching and targeting are performed on-device, so browsing data and attention metrics remain stored locally rather than being shared with third-party trackers. The system uses these locally measured attention signals to determine how rewards are distributed to publishers and participating users.