First published 4 April 2020. Expanded in October 2026 so a browser reward is not described as a share of the company. Basic Attention Token is an Ethereum token. Brendan Eich is the person most associated with Brave, the browser company that sold it. The sale started on 31 May 2017 and hit its cap in under a minute. It sold 1 billion BAT for 156,250 ETH, about 35 million dollars at the time. A handful of buyers took a large share of that. A fast sale is not a wide distribution.
The cap is 1.5 billion. One billion was the sale. Three hundred million was a pool for user growth. Two hundred million was a development pool. The sale terms said there would not be another sale. Sold tokens could be transferred at once. The development pool was the part with a lock. BAT is not a share of Brave Software. The browser can pay a user in BAT for ads. That payment is a company product. Holding BAT does not by itself entitle you to ad revenue.
ETH pays the fee. BAT does not. A copy on another chain is a different send. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to turn on Brave ads, to claim a reward, or to buy BAT.
