Foreword

Useful roadmaps set direction and list goals and requirements. More important, the roadmap reflects the expectation of unforeseen terrain and unexpected innovations likely to emerge, rather than starting from an unrealistic fixed architecture and too near-term a set of implementation choices.

The map is not the terrain, so each roadmap will age past a point of usefulness. This has been the case with the BAT Roadmap 1.0 published on June 18, 2017, shortly after our Basic Attention Token launch. This 2.0 roadmap intends to cover the next year to 18 months.

An important point that we wish to reiterate and emphasize here: as with Brave browser, all BAT platform work excludes by construction any tracking or targeting by remote ad servers or exchanges.

History

The Brave Browser

The Brave browser is the first client and proving ground for BAT, with BAT utility first established in Brave in October, 2017. Brave has grown to over 25 million Monthly Active Users (MAU), and over 8 million Daily Active Users (DAU). We expect Brave to grow to 50 million MAU and 17 million DAU by the end of the year.

BAT Utility

As highlighted in our January 2021 State of the BAT post, BAT already has tremendous utility. Over 3.8M Monthly Transacting Users have used BAT tokens in the platform, with over 13M Brave/BAT rewards wallets created to date.

BAT is one of the most widely utilized tokens, with over 1M verified publishers accepting BAT from Brave Rewards users. The April 2019 introduction of Brave Ads delivered on the promise of BAT rewards for user attention, and has grown to serve over 2.5K ad campaigns from over 400 advertisers in +190 countries.

BAT utility has expanded beyond Brave Rewards, with BAT among the first assets supported as collateral by MakerDAO, Compound, and other leading DeFi protocols.

Approach

Capitalizing on our user base and the success we have had with BAT adoption, we intend to make crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) accessible and usable for everyone through the following efforts.

Brave Wallet

The foundation for mass adoption and use of crypto and DeFi will be the Brave Wallet, which will unify Brave Rewards, custodial accounts, and best-in-class non-custodial (i.e., the user owns their private key, best stored in a hardware device) accounts in Brave.

Features of the Brave Wallet will include:

• A new, native Ethereum wallet implementation, replacing the existing Crypto Wallets in Brave.
• Redesign of the current UI with UX designed to reduce friction among accounts.
• Mobile as well as desktop support.
• A JavaScript Ethereum Provider API (window.ethereum) supplied to web pages by default, without the need to install a separate extension.
• Custom experiences for DeFi and NFT use-cases.
• Options for buying crypto with fiat payment methods such as credit/debit cards, bank accounts, and smartphone wallets.

Future aspirations for the Brave Wallet include:

• Utilizing BAT earned through Brave Rewards to pay transaction fees.
• Support for integrated NFT redemption uses within Brave.

Brave DEX Aggregator: DeFi for Everyone

Brave will bring DeFi to everyone through a new decentralized exchange aggregator to enable token swaps with distinct advantages and added value for Brave/BAT users, including:

• Discounts when utilizing BAT for paying transaction fees.
• Discounts for users that hold BAT balances in their wallet.
• Multi-chain support with many assets and blockchains.

Some of the things we plan to explore for Brave DeFi include:

• A Decentralized EXchange (DEX) where Brave will incentivize liquidity providers to grow the BAT and broader crypto ecosystems.
• L2 solutions or other optimizations (see Themis section) to enable DeFi access and participation for people with as little as $1 in BAT earnings.

Themis: Scaling Brave/BAT Ads

Themis is our research work on progressively moving anonymous but accountable operations on-chain for Brave/BAT Ads, to reduce dependency on the Brave ad confirmation reporting protocol and transition to anonymously validating ad confirmation events on-chain. With top blockchain projects, we are investigating both L2 solutions and L1 blockchains in conjunction with Ethereum. An overview and timeline for Themis can be found here, and some technical reports we have published on Themis can be found here and here.

Decentralized Web

BAT is a key component in Brave’s mission to build a Decentralized Web. Towards that end we will research the following:

• BAT utility for search engines.
• Use of BAT for e-commerce.
• Use of BAT for VPN and various private communication platforms.
• BAT rewards for content verified on IPNS.
• Ability to use BAT for content pinning on IPFS (file sharing).

Community Outreach

We realize the importance of a thriving and engaged community and plan to invest significant resources in the near future to scale and expand our community efforts. We intend to do the following:

• Regular updates about the status of various initiatives.
• AMAs with team members.
• BAT Ambassadors program.
• Expand community to various platforms like WeChat, Kakao, Line.
• Integrate our community site within the BAT site.
• Translate content into various languages for greater accessibility.

We welcome and encourage the Community and Brave users to connect with us to contribute toward building a better Web, or ask questions:

• Reddit
• Discord for Themis
• Telegram
• Twitter