At the beginning of the year, a few claimed that 2017 would see the rise of the initial coin offerings.
This seems to have been fulfilled in quite a fanatical manner. Coin proposals for a plethora of unforeseen Blockchain applications like E-sports, Artificial Intelligence, and... Advertising?
Attempting to reinventing the wheel of advertising is what the people behind Brave Software are trying to do with the basic attention token. They bill the BAT token as a technology that “radically improves the efficiency of digital advertising” and features members like Brenden Eich who co-founded Mozilla and Brian Bondy from Khan Academy. A notable software team is an eye catcher and looking under the hood of what this token is offering might catch investors attentions.
David vs. Goliath
In the advertising world capturing a market share of customers is essential. The team itself faces a mighty uphill battle to capture a market share and create an ecosystem with BAT tokens. Brave software has an existing browser but it has an estimated >100k downloads for mobile devices and an unknown amount of desktop downloads. This means the Brave ecosystem is quite minuscule compared to browser giants like Google, Firefox, and Safari.
The competition seems stiff as well as they are competing against platforms like Google, Steem and Blendle.
Battle tested team
On a more positive note, Brave itself seems willing and capable of building an ecosystem. The software firm has already raised over six mln in seed funding for their software. Interestingly it came under a firestorm a year ago when it actively fought back against anti-ad blocking by mainstream media organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Dow Jones by offering help with their advertising woes.
The use of funds is always a point of concern for any wary investor. For the BAT initial coin offering the team is seeking between $4 to $15 mln Ethereum. A proposal for how the funds will be used is given in the whitepaper.
Author’s take
This project will probably not offer an immediate return on investment. It’s more akin to Golem in that it takes time for a mature product to be produced and a viable ecosystem to be created. The people behind the BAT token are offering good ideas and some level of development which makes this ICO promising.