Since the development of the bitcoin protocol others saw other ways of achieving “digital scarcity” which had different properties. The cryptocurrencies that followed are generally described as altcoins. At the beginning of 2018 they can broadly grouped as follows:
Advertising, blockchain tool suites, colored coins,cryptocurrencies, debit cards, distributed exchanges, distributed file storage, identity verification, privacy coins, easy to program blockchains, social networking, cryptocurrency wallets
Let’s take a look at one these detail
The BAT (Basic Attention Tokens – basicattentiontoken.org) is part of a whole infrastructure secretly bubbling away by someone who gave us the Internet we take for granted today.
Brendan Eich created JavaScript. Co-founded Mozilla & Firefox. If he hadn’t created JavaScript it would be hard to imagine the Internet we take for granted today, just ask anybody in the software industry or try to read the next paragraph carefully.
Tim Burners-Lee could said to have given us the Stevenson’s Rocket (the web browser) but ulimately Brendan gave us the “points and the signaling” electronics of the Internet. Brunell the rail lines themselves, the tunnels and stations. Brendan’s JavaScript contribution amongst other things help complex data to be continuously streamed to a web browser and be constantly interpreted. Be this watching streaming youtube or TV to financial data being constantly updated on your web browser or mobile phone.
The premise of the “Brave” web browser is that your experience of the Internet should be unhindered by constant bombardment of advertising. To that end, it strips out all the advertising so that you can go about experiencing the Internet circa 1997.
If advertisers wish to reach you, they purchase Basic Attention Tokens from the marketplace.
If you as the user nominate to receive advertising you will receive BATs from advertiser for viewing their adverts, meanwhile the platform will receive a fractional amount of BATs to maintain and develop the platform.
Thus advertisers get the chance to highly focus their advertising by demographic profile, the ability to offer coupons and track take-up. End user’s get the ability to tightly control the advertising they experience.
When you car insurance comes up for renewal you are likely to welcome car insurance adverts. But right now, once you start shopping for car insurance the adverts chase you for months after you have renewed.
Brendan Eich Basic Attention Token’s could pave the way for pay per article online periodical consumption.
