[Ed note: This blog post is not to be construed as advertising but the author of this post may have a financial interest in the product discussed herein.]
The honor of Dystopin Futurez "White Paper of the Month" goes to the team at Brave and the developers of the Basic Attention Token. Working in conjunction with Brave, an ad-blocking, privacy-first browser, BAT tokens are exchanged between consumers, publishers, and advertisers as a reward for delivering quality content and targeted ads to focused readers. Brave co-founder Brendan Eich explains his vision:
This economic model removes the middlemen overwhelming the current digital advertising ecosystem, reducing possible inputs for spam, malware, and fraudulent activity.
Blockchain-based digital advertising is the system best suited to break the stranglehold on digital advertising held by Facebook and Google; small wonder Facebook is banning ads for cryptocurrencies.
As a web publisher I am obviously a fan of this system. Imagine if the legions of readers who follow this blog could all participate in a system that rewards their attention with tokens that contribute to the site's continued operation. Bitcoin was initially thought of as the perfect way to conduct said microtransactions, but that was before the price skyrocketed to $20,000 and 13 million Coinbase customers were clogging up a network designed to process a mere 7 transactions per second. BAT tokens are a great example of how the cryptocurrency market is becoming more specialized, and highlights a specific use case of the Ethereum blockchain. (BAT is an Ethereum Request for Comments /ERC 20 token).
If you prefer your cryptocurrency primers with less rambling, click here for a more sober take:
[Ironically, the previous link was retrieved from Steemit, a social network that has a similar value proposition: content curators and creators are rewarded for their influence in Steem, a cryptocurrency that fuels the Steemit ecosystem.]