Mardi 17 avril 2018
The creator of Javascript is using blockchain to save the internet from ads
The Problem(s) with Ads
In the internet’s early days, web users only had to deal with the occasional banner every now and then. Today, ads are everywhere, all the time. We have banner ads, wallpaper ads, search ads, interstitial ads, video ads, pop-up ads, email ads, newsfeed ads — and much, much more. To make matters worse, advertisements are no longer confined to our web browsers. They appear on most internet-connected mobile games and applications as well. In addition to being inundated with ads everywhere we go, we’re also being tracked. Most websites use third-party trackers to monitor your activity in a wide variety of ways and use that data to build up a unique “fingerprint” that can be used to identify you regardless of where you go on the web, and regardless of what device you browse on. Right now, as you read this article, there’s likely around 40 different trackers watching what you do and harvesting data about your activity. This isn’t unusual, either. In fact, it’s the norm.
Blockchain to the rescue
If there’s anyone who can help fix this problem, it’s Brendan Eich, the founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. Eich has spent the last three years developing an alternative to our fraud-ridden, inefficient, and user-hostile online ad system. He and his team describe it as a “decentralized, transparent digital ad exchange based on blockchain.” Don’t worry — it’s not as nebulous or confusing as it sounds. Broadly speaking, Eich’s solution is an attempt to wipe the slate clean and put a better system in place, one where you aren’t assaulted with ads, and where the lion’s share of the money spent by advertisers doesn’t fall into the hands of middlemen. The system is made up of two main parts, the first of which is a new browser called Brave. In Eich’s own words, Brave is “a privacy focused browser that puts users first and blocks third-party ads and trackers by default.” That means you receive not just a clean, ad-free, and fast browsing experience, but also that your privacy isn’t compromised by an onslaught of tracking bugs and cookies. It’s true that you could achieve a similar result in Chrome or Firefox by installing a handful of extensions, but Brave does both ad blocking and tracker blocking simultaneously — and at all times — from the moment you fire it up. It also keeps nifty stats on the number of ads you’ve blocked over time, and how much time you’ve saved because of faster, tracker-free page loads. How is anyone paid if ads are blocked by default? Glad you asked. That’s where the second component of Eich’s system comes in. The Brave browser is powered by a blockchain-based unit of account called the Basic Attention Token (BAT). In the words of its creators, BAT is “a new token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers, and users. It all happens on the Ethereum blockchain. The token can be used to obtain a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the Brave platform. The utility of the token is based on user attention, which simply means a person’s focused mental engagement.” BAT isn’t a currency. It can be exchanged between two parties just like currency, but it’s more than a store of value. BAT can be used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users on the BAT platform, and can be utilized to directly measure, exchange, and verify attention. As Eich explains “a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin would not enable this kind of distinct, in-platform problem solving.” Put simply, BAT not only allows you to literally pay attention to websites, but also get paid for your attention. Or at least it will, in the not-so-distant future.Growing pains
Eich’s blockchain-based ad exchange system is still under construction. He and his team are rolling it out in phases. Right now, they’re in phase two of three. Phase one was the Brave browser, phase two was Basic Attention Token, and phase three involves reintroducing ads that users are paid to view — but we’ll get into that last part in a moment.
BAT not only allows you to literally pay attention to websites, but also get paidfor your attention.
Brave’s creators know that only a small percentage of users will opt in to this voluntary payment system. “We don’t expect most people to do this,” Eich admitted. To supplement the system, Brave also introduced a stimulus package in 2017 to incentivize early adoption and coax new users onto the platform. After Basic Attention Token’s explosive ICO (which raised over $35 million in 30 seconds), Brave set 500 million BAT aside for the “user growth pool.”
“We created 500 million BAT,” Eich continues, “that we can then use to give to users to put change in their pocket from the get-go, which they can use to reward creators who refer new users to us. If those new users browse for 30 days with us, then that automatically causes the U.S. equivalent of five dollars in Basic Attention Tokens to go to the creator who referred them.”
The plan seems to be working. Brave now boasts about 1.4 million active daily users, and it’s getting bigger every day. But to truly disrupt the current ad-based internet model and supplant it with a newer, fairer, blockchain-based ad exchange, Brave needs to roll out the rest of the platform.
Reintroducing ads: the last piece of the puzzle
The next piece of the puzzle is reintroducing ads in a more controlled, efficient, and private manner than what currently exists on the internet. Brave will soon let you opt in to seeing a small number of advertisements, which will appear in either a private tab, or an in-browser notification. Brave plans to allow some ads on publisher pages, but the first rollout will be user-private ads. It’s important to note, though, that these ads will not be “targeted” in the same way that current online ads are.
BAT has the potential to fundamentally change how you use the internet.
Eventually, Brave will let publishers sell ad space. “If publishers want to do ads in their space that we block,” Eich explains, “with their consent, and with the user’s consent, we will give 15 percent to the user, we’ll take 15 percent, and we’ll give 70 percent to the publisher. We’ll always give 70 to the owner of the ad space — be that the user or the publisher — if they’re willing to do a deal with us.”
Later, when the platform is finished, Brave will let you “cash out” and convert BAT into dollars, bitcoins, or any other currency. By default, though, the Brave Payments system is built to take a user-specified amount from your wallet and redistribute it to the websites you visit most over the next 30 days — thus completing the cycle from advertiser to user to publisher, and helping the system go, as Eich puts it, “steady state.”
Once Brave is complete, it will provide an alternative path through which you can explore the internet. One where you can wander freely, without being tracked, without being bombarded with ads, and without screwing over publishers by blocking the ads that bring them revenue.