Mikhail Marchenko

What Is Basic Attention Token (BAT)?

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Basic Attention Token.

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.

Basic Attention Token launched in 2017 following one of the fastest sell-out initial coin offerings (ICOs) of all time, with the platform raising a total of $35 million in under a minute. Since then, it has rolled out its attention-based advertising experience to users in most countries through its Brave Rewards program.

As of November 2020, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada had the most active advertising campaigns.

Who Are the Founders of Basic Attention Token?

Basic Attention Token has two founders: Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy — two highly distinguished individuals in the internet browsing software industry.

Brendan Eich is the CEO of Brave Software, Inc — the parent firm behind the Brave browser and Basic Attention Token. Prior to his role at Brave, Eich was the founder and CTO of Mozilla and also invented JavaScript in 1995. He also helped launch one of the world's most popular web browsers in 2004 — Mozilla Firefox.

Likewise, Brian Bondy joins as Brave's and Basic Attention Token’s CTO. Bondy is a heavily experienced engineer with previous experience working as a senior software engineer at Mozilla, software developer at Corel Corporation and software development lead at Khan Academy. Together, Eich and Bondy have a combined 50+ years of software development experience.

In total, the Basic Attention Token website lists 16 team members, many of whom have a development, engineering or research background.

What Makes Basic Attention Token Unique?

The primary use case for the Basic Attention Token is as a payment token for running advertising campaigns through Brave Ads. As of November 2020, advertisers must commit to a minimum ad spend of $2,500 per month to be able to launch their campaign, but a self-serve platform with potentially lower limits is currently in the pipeline.

Currently, this advertising budget must be paid entirely in Basic Attention Tokens, which advertisers can acquire from a variety of third-party exchange platforms. Out of this, Brave takes a small commission, and the rest is distributed to publishers and users.

One of the main distinguishing features about Basic Attention Token and the Brave Browser ecosystem is the capacity to reward (tip) users who are not yet part of the network — this includes both websites and individual Twitter users. These users can then securely register to the platform to collect any tips they have accumulated.

Both Basic Attention Token and Brave Browser have achieved significant user uptake since their launch. As of October 2020, Brave Browser has a total of 20.5 million active monthly users, whereas the Basic Attention Token is now held by a total of more than 368,000 unique wallets.

How Many Basic Attention Token (BAT) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Basic Attention Token has a maximum total supply of 1.5 billion tokens. This cannot be increased without switching to a new token smart contract.

Almost all of this supply is in current circulation. As a result, Basic Attention Token can be considered almost fully diluted.

In its 2017 ICO, a total of 1 billion BAT tokens were sold to investors, whereas the remaining 200 million tokens were locked in a development pool, and 300 million BAT was reserved for the user growth pool (UGP). As of November 2020, both the development pool and UGP pool addresses are nearly empty.

What Is Loopring [LRC]?

In 2020, the average daily trading volume of the entire cryptocurrency market fluctuated in the approximate range of $50-$200 million. Most of that trading is conducted on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges — online platforms operated by private companies that store users’ funds and facilitate the matching of buy and sell orders.

Such platforms have a number of downsides common to all of them, so a new type of exchange — decentralized— has emerged to try to alleviate these disadvantages. However, fully decentralized exchanges are not without their own flaws.

Loopring’s purported goal is to combine centralized order matching with decentralized on-blockchain order settlement into a hybridized product that will take the best aspects of both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

LRC tokens became available to the public during an initial coin offering (ICO) in August 2017, while the Loopring protocol was first deployed on Ethereum mainnet in December 2019.

Who Are the Founders of Loopring?

The founder and current CEO of Loopring Foundation, which manages the development of Loopring protocol, is Daniel Wang, a software engineer and entrepreneur based in Shanghai, China.

Wang has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Science and Technology of China, as well as a master’s degree in the same field from Arizona State University.

Prior to starting work on Loopring, Wang has held multiple managerial and executive positions in major tech companies: he was a lead software engineer at the medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific, the senior director of engineering, search, recommendation and ads system at the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, as well as a tech lead and senior software engineer at Google.

Wang has also co-founded several companies: Yunrang (Beijing) Information Technology Ltd. and the cryptocurrency services firm Coinport Technology Ltd.

What Makes Loopring Unique?

The main idea behind Loopring is to combine elements of centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges to create a protocol that will enjoy their unique advantages and eliminate inefficiencies.

Centralized exchanges are currently the main mode of operation for crypto trading services. While highly popular and convenient, using a centralized exchange carries a number of risks, the chief of which is their custodial nature. Because these exchanges hold users’ funds for them between the points of depositing and withdrawing, those funds come under the risk of being partially or fully lost due to potential hacker attacks, malicious actors inside the exchange or regulatory intervention.

Another major problem for centralized exchanges is the lack of transparency: the fact that trades are not settled on the blockchain, but rather stored in the exchange’s internal records makes possible price manipulation by the exchange and allows it to use user funds for unauthorized purposes while in custody.

In order to eliminate these problems, a new type of trading service has emerged in recent years: a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX). Instead of holding user funds in custody and processing trades internally, it helps buy and sell orders connect directly with each other and settle trades on a public blockchain.

While removing the custodial and transparency risks, DEXs introduce disadvantages of their own: mainly, lower efficiency (when compared to centralized alternatives) associated with the limited capabilities of the underlying blockchains and fragmented liquidity.

Loopring protocol seeks to keep the advantages of decentralized exchanges while reducing or eliminating their inefficiencies via innovative hybrid solutions. Through managing orders in a centralized manner but settling the trades on-blockchain, and combining up to 16 orders into circular trades instead of allowing strictly one vs. one trading pairs, Loopring expects to increase the efficiency of order execution, as well as enhance the liquidity of DEXs.

Who Are the Founders of Curve?

The founder and CEO of Curve is Michael Egorov, a Russian scientist who has various experience with cryptocurrency-related enterprises.

In 2015, he co-founded and became CTO of NuCypher, a cryptocurrency business building privacy-preserving infrastructure and protocols.

Egorov is also the founder of decentralized bank and loans network LoanCoin.

Curve’s regular team is part of the CRV allocation structure, and will receive tokens according to a two-year vesting schedule as part of the initial launch plan.

In August 2020, Egorov said that he “overreacted” by locking up a large amount of CRV tokens as a response to yearn.finance’s voting power, awarding himself 71% of governance in the process.

What Makes Curve Unique?

Curve has gained considerable attention by following its remit as an AMM specifically for stablecoin trading.

The launch of the DAO and CRV token brought in further profitability, given CRV’s use for governance, as it is awarded to users based on liquidity commitment and length of ownership.

The explosion in DeFi trading has ensured Curve’s longevity, with AMMs turning over huge amounts of liquidity and associated user profits.

As such, Curve caters to anyone involved in DeFi activities such as yield farming and liquidity mining, as well as those looking to maximize returns without risk by holding notionally non-volatile stablecoins.

The platform makes money by charging a modest fee which is paid to liquidity providers.

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Cryptocurrency newbie? Get all the information you need about the industry with Alexandria, CoinMarketCap’s dedicated education resource.

How Many Curve (CRV) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Curve (CRV) launched in August 2020, along with the Curve DAO. Its purpose is to function as a governance medium, incentive structure and fee payment method, along with long-term earnings method for liquidity providers.

The total CRV supply is 3.03 billion tokens, the majority of which (62%) are distributed to liquidity providers. The remainder is divided as follows: 30% to shareholders, 3% to employees and 5% to a community reserve. The shareholder and employee allocations come with a two-year vesting schedule.

CRV had no premine, and the gradual unlocking of tokens means that around 750 million should be in circulation one year after launch.

How Is the Curve Network Secured?

Curve carries the standard risks associated with depositing funds in smart contracts and dealing with AMMs, namely impermanent loss.

As Curve only supports stablecoins, the risk of markets moving too quickly is reduced, but users can still lose money once markets are rebalanced to reflect cross-market prices.

Curve has been audited, but this does not do anything to counter the risks involved in being exposed to a specific cryptocurrency.

Where Can You Buy Curve (CRV)?

CRV is a freely-tradable token and is available against cryptocurrency, stablecoin and fiat currency pairs on major exchanges.

These include Binance, OKEx and Huobi Global, which hold the lion’s share of trading volume as of September 2020.

New to cryptocurrency and want to know how to buy Bitcoin (BTC) or any other token? Check out the details here.