The Basic Attention Token finally releases an update for the Mercury Update!

Update from the team - 

 Given our rate of progress on the more comprehensive browser-side refactoring, we’re happy to announce that the first phase of BAT Mercury will be live by Friday, October 6th. 

For those of you who don't know about the Basic Attention Token or BAT and the Brave browser.  It is a utility token based on the Ethereum technology that can also be used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users in a new, blockchain-based digital advertising and services platform.  

It's main platform will be the Brave browser which automatically blocks trackers and ads on any website that you visit. The Brave browser was released in the very early stages of development mostly to collect user feedback and create a better product through user input. It's already available on the app store but currently doesn't have support for BAT coins, or a mechanism for distributing BAT tokens too publishers. 

This is exactly why this release is such a big deal, we will finally have a platform that actually incorporates the BAT token and begins to distribute BAT to publishers that sign to become Brave-verified publishers. Unfortunately their will be a bit of a hassle becoming a Brave-verified publisher.

 Brave-verified publishers will be required to create an Uphold account and go through their verification process to start collecting BAT. However, Brave-verified publishers will not need to re-verify control of their websites. 

Brave has created a partnership with Uphold to handle distributing revenue to publishers on their platform which in my opinion ads legitimacy to the BAT team because from what I've seen, Uphold has a great reputation. 

I think the part of this update that has me most intrigued is the final paragraph where they mention 

 It is important to remember that use of BAT is not limited to the Brave browser — any developer is allowed to integrate the browser of their choice with the BAT Mercury service (Of course, the developer will need to be able to modify their browser’s source code) 

If you're not a big fan of the Brave browser, we can always hope that another one of the big browsers picks up the BAT token and incorporates it into their browser. 

Finally

If you're a publisher, especially a publisher that markets to user's that are more likely to have ad blockers you've probably realized that ad blockers are definitely a real issue affecting the amount of money you can make creating content on the web. I truly believe that BAT has the potential to help you better monetize your content or at the very least recoup some of the losses you've experienced due to ad blockers.