I have been hoping for a long time that browsers could use cryptocurrency to monetize publishers through methods other than advertising.
Was very glad to see Brave pairing a browser with cryptocurrency (though I don't know how they will handle the scalability issues), and then very disappointed to see that it's not actually replacing ads, but instead encouraging users to watch them.
They could and it would probably not get enough traction. "Just another walled garden and more power for Google to squash whoever they like or don't like, sigh". Hard to get people excited about that. I suppose the idea here is that crypto-based tokens are more open: I'd need to research how exactly it is handled on Ethereum chain but I imagine Brave won't solely be in control over what happens to BAT.
Interoperability I think is the biggest hurdle. There's nothing particularly special about blockchains here except that it's really easy to move between currencies once you've got accounts on the right exchanges.
Without cryptocurrency, you'd need some way for a user to pay all websites they visit. Ads can go on any browser and be served from any company. Ad networks don't need to interoperate. But if a user is paying publishers, it's a huge hurdle to have to pay a new publisher payment processor every time you visit a new site. Sure, 70% might accept Google payments, but what about the rest of them? And what about the users who are not on Google's payment platform?
Not that cryptocurrency solves all these problems. It's still a hard thing to do. But I think it at least lowers the barrier.
> it's really easy to move between currencies once you've got accounts on the right exchanges.
wait so the users are going to need more than one kind of token? And they're going to need to open accounts on an exchange?
> Without cryptocurrency, you'd need some way for a user to pay all websites they visit. Ads can go on any browser and be served from any company. Ad networks don't need to interoperate. But if a user is paying publishers, it's a huge hurdle to have to pay a new publisher payment processor every time you visit a new site. Sure, 70% might accept Google payments, but what about the rest of them? And what about the users who are not on Google's payment platform?
Hold on, BAT is 1 kind of token. All the ad publishers need to integrate with the BAT. How is this different than having all ad publishers integrating with Google Token?
If there is a competing token, let's call it CAT, how is that different than the AppleToken competing with the Google Token, from the user's perspective?
@hudon - it's a blockchain protocol, so BAT will be bound by the rules of the token as well. I.e. it won't be able to do any gatekeeping on who uses the system and for what purpose, or do any other monopolistic practices.
> " it won't be able to do any gatekeeping on who uses the system and for what purpose"
Agreed. This is actually something the blockchain has that existing systems do not: censorship resistance. The ability to participate and not be shut down, fined, or jailed by the rule of law.
However, if you remove the need to be censorship resistant and assume that no one will use the ad publishing system for illegal activity, I'd be really curious to hear what you mean by "other monopolistic practices".
A blockchain platform can be designed to not give the developer direct control over things like pricing, or anything at all. I don't know if that is what Brave is planning with its ad platform mind you, but it's certainly possible, and would be a differentiator only possible by building on top of a distributed ledger. A good example would be the blockchain itself, where every cost users incur, like transaction fees, is determined by end-user action (e.g. the miners and users), rather than through collusion by some set of owners.
> A blockchain platform can be designed to not give the developer direct control over things like pricing, or anything at all
The developers don't control the price... It's a market between brave/publishers/users.
Are you saying Google's engineers would be able to affect the price? That possibility has no affect on the product's success. That's like saying Amazon engineers can go and change the price of items so we should replace Amazon with a blockchain.
If it does than, then it can get out-competed by Rainforest, which is a clone of Amazon but with lower fees.
Then if Sahara comes along and copies Rainforest but uses the blockchain for payments, they won't be able to compete because they will have to pay for blockchain network transaction fees and potential blockchain network backlog (unreliable payments compared to say funding a Google Wallet or some such)
That depends on whether the market leader benefits from network effects. All other things being equal, the market leader in a naturally monopolistic industry, like say social networks, has a much more compelling product than competitors. That allows the market leader to extract monopoly rent.
As for the opening the account on exchange - that won't be necessary soon, because of the distributed exchanges which can do this in the background via smart contracts.
Soon you will be able set up your wallet to automatically convert the incoming tokens into whatever currency you want. Including tokens pegged to USD or any other asset.
To build on what you're saying, I'd also like to pay publishers for content instead of viewing advertising. However, advertising has two useful features.
1. It provides a default way of paying publishers without any action by the consumer (i.e. the see an ad if they don't set up a payment system)
2. It establish a price for viewing the content, (i.e. the price that an advertiser would pay to show you an ad)
For reason 1, I can see how it is necessary to have an advertising option as a default to get the ecosystem rolling.
However I really, really hope that users would get the option of paying publishers directly instead of seeing ads. This is where reason 2 comes into play, it provides a market price for us to pay for the content we consume - just pay what an advertiser would pay.
Was very glad to see Brave pairing a browser with cryptocurrency (though I don't know how they will handle the scalability issues), and then very disappointed to see that it's not actually replacing ads, but instead encouraging users to watch them.