AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X BAT X BRAVE

Basic Attention Token is the token that powers a new blockchain-based digital advertising platform designed to fairly reward users for their attention, while providing advertisers with a better return on their ad spend. This experience is delivered through the Brave Browser, where users can watch privacy-preserving adverts and receive BAT rewards for doing so. On the other hand, advertisers can deliver targeted ads to maximize engagement and cut down losses due to ad fraud and abuse. The Basic Attention Token itself is the unit of reward in this advertising ecosystem, and is exchanged between advertisers, publishers and users. Advertisers pay for their advertising campaigns in BAT tokens. Out of this budget, a small portion is distributed to advertisers, while 70% is distributed to users — whereas the intermediaries that typically drive up advertising costs are cut out of the equation to improve cost-efficiency.

Brave Software’s fast, privacy-oriented browser, combined with its blockchain-based digital advertising platform, is reinventing the Web for users, publishers and advertisers. Users get a private, speedier Web experience with much longer battery life, publishers increase their revenue share, and advertisers achieve better conversion. Users can opt into privacy-respecting ads that reward them with a frequent flyer-like token they can redeem or use to tip or contribute to publishers and other content creators. The Brave solution is a win-win for everyone who has a stake in the open Web and who is weary of giving up privacy and revenue to the ad-tech intermediaries. Brave currently has over 50 million monthly active users and 15 million daily active users. Brave browser’s value proposition is its privacy-centric advertisements which does not track users, and that they are only opt-in. As users browse the web and opt into advertisements on Brave, they are rewarded with BAT for their attention. Publishers also receive a share of the BAT if they are able to retain quality users, while advertisers get better returns on their advertising funds by being able to reach quality audiences who are willing to pay attention to ads. Users who have BAT can also choose to automatically contribute their BAT tokens to publishers based on their attention spent on the website or to manually tip them. Some known publishers who have signed up with Brave include The Washington Post, Vice, The Guardian, and more.

We hosted an AMA session with BAT and Brave on 3rd August.

Miss Uzma was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations of BAT and Brave was the guest. He shared delightful knowledge and unique features of BAT token and Brave browser.
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Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Hello everyone

Welcome to the special AMA session with BAT n Brave

Lets welcome our guest Mr Luke Mulks

Luke Mulks:
Hello everyone! Thank you for having me here today for the AMA!

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Welcome here 🤗

Thankew for bringing us the BAT n Brave ❤️

Luke Mulks:
Absolutely

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
So can you please introduce yourself to our community before starting the AMA session

Luke Mulks:
for some background — I began working with Brave in March 2016. Prior to that, I worked in the belly of the beast in digital advertising, with the largest media companies on the web and all the major agencies and digital adtech stacks — prior to that, was in startups and publishing.

I was a contributor / co-author on the BAT Whitepaper, and now work in Business Operations / Dev / Growth / Strategy and oversee our BAT Community.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Nice to meet you 🤝

So lets start the AMA session

Luke Mulks:
Likewise!

LFG, gm all!

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Give us a brief explanation about ‘BAT’. What popped up in your mind to create such a project in this Space?

Luke Mulks:
Great question. The first thing that caught my attention when I heard about Brave as a request for comment on a proof of concept that used Bitcoin to support publishers, and included an advertising model that was focused on privacy and rewarding users.

That proposal became a proof of concept called Brave Payments, that was introduced in Fall 2016.

We encountered some issues with scaling and using bitcoin at the time, which was right when the first token launches began taking place on Ethereum.

We saw a big opportunity with being able to establish a unit of account for attention and the broader attention economy, and there was a big use case that we could tackle with private advertising and creator payments. The BAT Whitepaper was produced and released in March of 2017, and we did our token launch on May 31, 2017. Was one the fastest sale to date at the time, and by October 2017 we had replaced Bitcoin in our proof of concept in the browser with BAT.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
What are its main features and advantages that discern it from other projects?

Luke Mulks:
BAT is really the first effort to introduce crypto utility representing attention, alongside user-first private advertising from an existing product in production. When we launched Brave Ads in April 2019, we closed the loop on the initial use case where users earn BAT from viewing private ads through Brave Rewards (70% of rev share for every ad they view), and then are able to either automatically contribute or tip BAT to Creators. We’ve scaled that concept into an operational multimillion dollar monthly revenue model that over 10 million Brave Rewards users have opted in to to-date, and over 2million Creators have verified with to accept BAT.

What really differentiated Brave and BAT at the time was that we actually had a product in production, with a working proof of concept that used cryptocurrency (bitcoin) and a team of veterans from different disciplines that all wanted to work together to fix a broken web.

One more bit actually — BAT represents the unit of account for attention, so the other differentiator is the ability to utilize BAT elsewhere in the attention economy, beyond the advertising and publisher case. We began to see this happen organically with BAT introduced into defi in 2019 and BAT being utilized with NFTs and in blockchain gaming.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
That’s great 👏🏼

Now tell us about Brave Browser and Brave wallet and its features shortly in Lyman words

Luke Mulks:
Happy to!

Brave begins with being a user-first company. This means that when we’re building software, business models, etc., we are doing so with the user’s priorities placed first. This means, protecting user’s privacy by default, introducing user revenue shares in business models where applicable, and designing and creating products and services that work for users instead of exploiting them. Unfortunately, monetization and business on web2 has grown to be very exploitative, with a small handful of companies building empire off of the attention and behavior of users. We’re aiming to fix that, by putting users first. This has grown to also include Brave Search, Brave VPN, Brave Talk, and additional upcoming services that put users first.

In November, we introduced the multichain Brave Wallet — a native, self-custodial wallet integrated in every Brave browser (desktop and mobile). The Brave Wallet currently supports mainnet ETH, EVM chains and we recently introduced Filecoin and Solana L1 support on desktop (mobile coming soon).

Web3 should naturally work in the broader Web, and there’s no better fit for doing that than a user-first web browser.

Some examples of how this experience works on mobile:

Brave Nightly (android) — Solana dApp support: https://twitter.com/lukemulks/status/1554736179949383680

Brave (android) — Ethereum / EVM dApp support: https://twitter.com/lukemulks/status/1547722897937928194

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Now tell us that How Brave and BAT Work Together and what are the incentives provide to users From this?

Luke Mulks:
Happy to.

Users opt-in to Brave Ads through Brave Rewards (in roughly 2 clicks).

Users view Brave Ads, and earn BAT (70% of the revenue for every ad they view).

Users can then automatically contribute or tip BAT to Brave Verified Creators, or link an uphold or gemini account and withdraw earned BAT.

BAT utility has also expanded beyond advertising and content creation, into defi protocols (Compound, Aave, Maker, etc.) and for NFTs (buy/sell NFTs with BAT on OpenSea, and soon Magic Eden) and BAT use in blockchain gaming on Splinterlands and in Gala Games.

We’re developing additional incentives with BAT and the Wallet — discounts by paying fees in BAT, and in other ways that incentivize Brave Wallet use over time.

What we’re also excited about is bringing BAT cross-chain, and using BAT with the multichain Brave Wallet.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
How does BAT deals with fraudulent ads? 🤔

Luke Mulks:
Good question. Fraud and anti-fraud are an arms race and adversarial game that never really ends. We have antifraud measures in place with Brave Ads and with Brave Creators that adapt and evolve over time. The tactics involved in anti-fraud are not disclosed publicly for obvious reasons, but we have an entire anti-fraud team dedicated to the effort, and stakeholders on relevant teams work closely with our antifraud team as well.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Are there any other partners of BAT besides Brave where users can get rewarded?

Luke Mulks:
A lot of our focus has been on proving the utility within Brave and the Brave ecosystem, but we’ve collaborated with Gala Games, Splinterlands and have observed companies like Coinhunt and others integrate BAT as a reward option. This is an area where we’re planning to put a lot of effort in developing out over time, as we now have a much cleaner path for users to engage with dApps through our Brave Wallet (and other wallets, too). The first step in this direction has been to create a Wallet Partner Program, where we’ve been inviting top dApps to partner and integrate Brave Wallet in their apps. This has led to discussions regarding new ways to utilize BAT or add/feature them in those dApps. Definitely more to come on this front, but we still remain focused on proving out many BAT utility cases within Brave so devs can see the use and adoption and apply them outside of Brave.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Now Share us about the token , What are the some of utilities of $BAT Token in Your Ecosystem? And if possible share to us the Tokenomics

Luke Mulks:
Sure thing -

We launched BAT by generating a total max supply of 1.5 billion BAT.

At our token sale in May 2017, we offered 1 billion BAT for sale, and had reserved 200 million BAT in a dev pool that unlocked 6 months after launch (November 2017) and finally, a User Growth Pool of 300 million BAT was created to be used to bootstrap growth and utility on the platform.

As of now, nearly all of the 1.5 billion BAT are in circulation, minus a small amount remaining in our user growth pool.

For the first utility model:

Advertisers buy campaigns in BAT or USD. For USD campaigns, Brave purchases BAT for the 70% user rev share, which we update on brave.com/transparency

Users earn BAT from viewing Brave Ads (70% rev share)

Users support Creators with earned BAT, or utilize on-chain in other capacities (defi, NFTs, etc.)

As Brave scales over time, adoption of Brave Ads and the volume of Brave Ads campaigns increase over time.

Brave growth, with BAT utility and a max total supply of 1.5B BAT create fractional BAT and scarcity, over time.

As Brave introduces new utility models, SDKs for BAT, etc., this adds to fractionality over time.

We’ve grown Brave 2x every year for 5 consecutive years, and are currently at nearly 60 million monthly active users, with over 10 million users opting in to Rewards (lifetime to date) — Roughly 20% of our user base opts in to Brave Ads and BAT, and we have a lot of focus on increasing that opt-in rate as a priority.

Brave is building on the thesis that when provided with an option that’s user-first, and economics that are user-first, that people will move with their feet to a user-first model with BAT over a user-hostile model with web2. So far, we’re seeing people move with their feet to this model.

Additional tokenomics are included in

our white paper: https://basicattentiontoken.org/static-assets/documents/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf

with a supplemental on token velocity: https://basicattentiontoken.org/static-assets/documents/token-econ.pdf

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Now moving to the last question of this segment

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?

Luke Mulks:
Great question.

From our token launch, we replaced bitcoin in our Brave Payments proof of concept with publishers in October 2017 (within 6 months of token launch).

We launched Brave Ads in April 2019.

We’ve been introducing new ad units and building up the Ads business since, including Sponsored Images, Brave News Ads, and soon Brave Search Ads.

In addition to advertising, we’ve put additional BAT utility efforts into our State of the BAT post that we produce every year, and have been working from our BAT v2 Roadmap that we released last year.

BAT v2 Roadmap (2021): https://brave.com/bat-roadmap-2-0/

State of the BAT 2022: https://brave.com/state-of-the-bat-2022/#bat-roadmap-v2

From State of the BAT 2022:

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
That’s the end of introduction segment

Now moving to the Twitter Questions

If you’re ready 😃

Luke Mulks:
LFG 🔥

Segment 2️⃣: Twitter Questions

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
1) How would you describe the readiness of the $BAT “plumbing” for v 1.0 release and for ads to go live (ie is the software infrastructure ready for a high volume of transactions)? What is $Brave telling potential advertisers when they ask about this?

Luke Mulks:
Brave Ads have been live since April 2019, and we’ve scaled monthly revenue from ~$50K/mo in the initial launch to multiple millions in monthly revenue. Our reporting protocol utilizes zero knowledge proofs (blinded tokens, based on the Privacy Pass protocol), with off-chain computation that we’re planning to progressively decentralize through our THEMIS project that includes upgrading to ZKP rollups that settle on Solana, with the option for users to settle to other chains with token claims. THEMIS upgrade work has begun, but is unlikely to roll out in 2022. We’re continuing to build on our hybrid off-chain/on-chain model while the THEMIS work is being handled by our team, with partners.

Advertisers remain new to crypto, and are mostly unaware of the details beyond high-level info on how blockchains work, etc. We have been positioned as a technology partner that helps bring advertisers and creators into Web3.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
2) I am a Brave user and i only prefer Brave because of security and it runs smoothly. Earning while browsing is the best part. But even after using it for whole month i could only accumulate 1–1.5 $BAT. Don’t you think more sweet reward can catch more users?

Luke Mulks:
That’s a great question. We’ve been working to increase the earnings for users through a few different ways:

1. Adding controls for users to increase the amount of ads they are able to see per hour, when ads are available to serve (brave://rewards -> Ads settings -> Ads per hour)

2. Adding additional Brave Ads units for users to be able to have more opportunities to earn: Sponsored Images (every 4th new tab page image = Sponsored Image), Brave News Ads, and upcoming Brave Search Ads.

3. Adding additional BAT utility to incentivize Brave Wallet use: Discounts on fees when using BAT through rebates, BAT NFTs with preloaded BAT rewards, etc. We’re working on several options for this, in parallel with Wallet features.

4. Adding options for Creators to reward their audiences with BAT, through NFTs, BAT rewards in a Brave Talk session or Discord group, etc. Work underway to introduce BAT-powered NFT options for Creators late this year, and early next year.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
3) in which ways do you generate revenue/profit ? So many projects just like to speak about the “long term vision and mission” but what are your short terms objectives? What are you focusing right now..?

Luke Mulks:
Brave generates revenue from:

- Brave Ads (30% of Brave Ads campaign revenue goes to Brave)
- Brave Wallet: processing fees on fiat to crypto purchases, fees on decentralized Brave Swap transactions
- A small fee is also collected on Tips / Contributions to Creators, to help cover infrastructure costs (5%)
- Brave Premium Products: VPN ($10–12/mo), Talk ($7/mo), Search ($3/mo), News (coming soon)

All of the above are live, in production, and have been for some time. Brave aims to have diversified revenue streams to weather shifts in market conditions and capture revenue where we can.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
4) Which publishers have signed up for Brave and will be transitioned to the BAT once the platform is finished?
And how can a publisher apply to become part of BAT platform that is being integrated into the Brave browser? Will they get any benefits in this?

Luke Mulks:
Good question.

Creators can verify their accounts/domains from the following channels:
- Website
- Twitter
- YouTube
- Reddit
- Vimeo
- Twitch
- Github

By going to https://creators.brave.com

(so yes, if you’re on Twitter or Reddit, you can verify those accounts and earn BAT tips, today)

We track aggregate verified Creators and Brave Ads info on https://brave.com/transparency, and there’s a really great site that members of our Community put together called https://bravebat.info/ that includes an index of verified Creators.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
5) 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?

Here’s the last question from twitter

Luke Mulks:
This is a fantastic question, and is really what differentiates Brave from most of the projects in this space.

With Brave Rewards, Ads and Creators, we had to create a process that people who aren’t familiar with crypto would understand, and opt-into.

The same goes for Brave Advertisers.

We’ve scaled that up to +10 million opted in users, and +2 million verified creators — with hundreds of advertisers to date.

We plan on taking learnings from growing Brave Rewards and Ads, and applying them to Web3 and self-custody with the Brave Wallet.

Every one of the +59 million monthly active Brave users has a multichain self-custodial Brave Wallet, that’s ready to activate.

A wallet that not only supports basic crypto transactions, purchases and decentralized swaps, but also provides native dApp support for Web3. I’d encourage people to try out the mobile dApp experience in Brave on Android and iOS — there’s something really special and smooth about being able to sign into a dApp from a native browser wallet, without having to leave the web page.

We feel that Brave is *the only* user-first gateway to Web3 adoption in market right now, and we’re putting a ton of focus on building usable experiences for tens of millions of users to activate and participate in.

One last bit.

Web3 as part of Web Browser, it just works, for people that want to discover and explore it. Brave is positioned to make Web3 accessible to mainstream, with strong privacy protection and user-first principles.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Thankeww Luke for the great and well detailed information 🔥

That is the end of Twitter segment

Now we are close to the last segment — Live QnA

Can we go?

Luke Mulks:
Lessg00

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Here we go

Segment 3️⃣: Live QnA
(In this segment group was opened for 60 seconds and Miners sent hundreds of questions. Guest choose some best to answer)

1) Itz Abhi ⚡️ :
There are so many ads on YouTube, Is it possible to prevent them by using Brave Browser? also I read there are some rewards for using your browser so while I watch YouTube through your platform then do I get rewards? So, What will be the rewards? Will it be in $BAT?

Luke Mulks:
Brave blocks YT ads on desktop and mobile, by default — and also has background playback on Android that you can enable in browser settings.

We’re looking to add video ads in Brave News and in custom Brave Ads notifications over time. Those will reward in BAT.

2) LFC:
Brave recently developed a system known as STAR, that allows users to participate in data collection. What are the main goals of STAR and how important is this system for protecting privacy of users?

Luke Mulks:
STAR is a privacy preserving way of providing telemetry to help us diagnose and improve our products — we did this with a P3A system as well — we have a blog post that covers in more detail, but this is all engineered with privacy by default. Privacy is absolutely paramount to Brave.

3) Amina Peter:
There is no staking for $BAT and people want to earn reward and use thier $BAT in interesting ways. Are you still considering staking for your users in future? Besides, are there future plans which will enable users to start utilize $BAT in other ways?

Luke Mulks:
We’re planning to include the ability for users to auto-earn with their BAT, blockchain native assets (ETH, SOL…) and stablecoins over time — these options will be very intuitive and easy to use. We’re going to be introducing a webapp with defi options for users that they can link to from the Wallet, in a complimentary web application, over time.

4) CHUKKY:
I learned that Brave wallet is a mobile non-custodial wallet. However, how does Brave protect privacy and security? Does it contain a security layer like 2fa or another wallets? Are security precautions like pin numbers and face recognition built into device support?
Do you have any plans to add unique features designed for NFTs and digital collectibles given how popular they are right now?

Luke Mulks:
Mobile and desktop self-custodial wallet. Brave provides the best in class privacy by default — while we don’t have the current ability to shield public transactions, we’re working on some private transaction options that we’re aiming to introduce next year. Users back up their keys with a recovery phrase with our wallet, and we’re in discussions with prospective partners to explore additional 2FA and other factors for recovery and potential multisig options in future.

On mobile, in addition to the option to input a password to unlock your Wallet, we have biometric unlock as an option.

5) Alchemy x Hunter:
Is BAT something that is best exchanged, or is the coin likely to grow in value signicantly? ie is or a good investment? Not clear whether as a ‘utility token’ it functions within the crypto market in a similar way to coins such as Etherium for example?

Luke Mulks:
BAT is a utility token, based on Ethereum (ERC20) but is able to be bridged cross-chain, and has holders on Polygon, BNB Chain, Solana, Avalanche and more. We want BAT to fly wherever supported, to be used in a multichain attention economy.

6) tripleq:
How can we become investors/partners with BAT?

Luke Mulks:
BAT is available to purchase through the Brave Wallet (fiat to crypto onramp), Swap through our Swap feature in the Wallet, is available on +200 crypto exchanges, and is available to purchase from Gemini or Uphold as well.

Creators can verify to earn bat on creators.brave.com

We’ll be introducing a public facing Wallet Partner Program to compliment our pilot program we have launched in the months ahead.

dApp devs can integrate the Brave Wallet in their frontend from https://wallet-docs.brave.com/

7) Jarvis $BTC:
I just joined Brave as a publisher and reached the minimum amount for withdrawal. What can I do to transfer funds to my bank account if Uphold is not connected to my country banking system? also How can I use BAT in Brave Wallet and DEX Aggregator?

Luke Mulks:
We’re working with Uphold and Gemini on additional region support, and should have some updates on this soon. We’re also engaged with one additional partner we plan to add to Rewards, but cannot disclose who this partner is at this time. In Japan, Bitflyer is our primary custodial partner that users can link with Rewards.

In the meantime, you should be able to hold earned BAT while we work through some of the regional issues, which are primarily currently in place due to compliance and other issues raised by our partners. We’re aiming to get this resolved as soon as possible.

In the Brave Wallet:

- You can buy BAT through the Buy feature.
- You can swap tokens for BAT with the Swap feature, on Ethereum, Optimism, Fantom, BNB Chain, Avalanche C-Chain, Polygon and soon Solana.
- You can also send BAT from your custodial accounts to your Brave Wallet.

8) ꧁❤️•༆$N͔͔a͔͔n̫̫c̨̨y͙͙♥️࿇꧂:
$BAT Since NFT is popular nowadays, is there a plan for NFT integration?

Luke Mulks:
Great question.

We’re aiming to add NFT gallery support in the Brave Wallet in desktop in version 1.44, and for mobile later this year. Users can also connect Brave Wallet to NFT marketplaces and view NFTs in that capacity as well.

We’re planning to add support for NFT discovery in Brave Search, and other forms of NFT aggregation. As a browser, with a search engine, we feel that we can do a lot for NFT discovery, and even more for proving out novel NFT utility cases with BAT.

9) CHUKKY:
What unique features does Brave Browser have its competitors like Chrome and Kiwi?
How do you plan to entice users to the Brave Browser?

Luke Mulks:
Because we block 3rd party trackers, scripts and ad request resources — Brave is significantly faster than the competition, saves significant amounts of data/bandwidth, and provides better battery life on mobile. The last benchmarks that I recall put Brave at up to 3x faster than the competition, but admittedly I should double check the latest benchmark testing.

Point being, Brave *feels* faster. Brave provides a cleaner browsing experience, with the option to earn with our attention, and native Web3 protocol integration and dApp exploration and private Search — all in one place. We’re building the solution to kick the big tech stack to the curb and switch to a model that puts you first and keeps everyone (including Brave) out of your personal business.

10) Amina Peter:
Is your company hiring or planning job openings for talented individuals? If so, what are the requirements needed? How are you expanding in size and technologies?

Luke Mulks:
We’re currently under 150 employees at the moment (if I recall correctly).

There are a few ways to get involved:

brave.com/careers

contributing to our open source codebase at https://github.com/brave

Getting involved with community.brave.com or through our BAT community at twitter.com/bat_community or https://reddit.com/r/BATProject

11) Mishi:
When using the Batswap do we use $BAT as transaction fee or there is another token to be used? What liquidity system will you provide for the $BAT token?

Luke Mulks:
We’re working with defi dApps on different chains to introduce wrapped BAT liquidity, in addition to DEX and defi support that currently exists within the ethereum ecosystem.

BAT is listed on +200 exchanges, including CB, Gemini, Binance, FTX and more.

BAT is also the 12th most distributed token by on-chain holders on ethereum (according to etherscan) and is growing in holder counts on new chains we’re introducing wrapped BAT onto.

*This segment ends here*

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Thankeww so much Luke for your valuable responses

It was a pleasure to hosting you here ❤️

Is there anything else you want to share with us?

Luke Mulks:
Sincere apologies all — I have a hard stop right now — and have to run. There are so many questions! I’ll try to come back later today and answer more as I’m able to.

Thanks again so much for hosting me at this AMA today, such a great community here.

Uzma || CRYPTO MINERS:
Thankeww again for being here…

Learn more about BAT here:

Website: https://basicattentiontoken.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/attentiontoken
Telegram: https://t.me/batproject
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/BATProject
Medium: Basic Attention Token