A brief history
Basic Attention Token was created by Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy and is housed on the Brave browser. Eich is the CEO of Brave Software Inc, inventor of Javascript, and founder of Mozilla Firefox. Bondy is the CTO of Brave Software Inc. The mission of the Brave browser is to provide a better advertising experience that doesn’t invade users’ privacy and gives them something for their trouble. BAT powers the Brave browser, although Brave users also have the option to opt-out of the BAT coin advertising model entirely and just use the browser on its own. Brave users periodically receive advertisements in the form of push notifications on their screens while browsing the internet. The notification contains a snippet of the ad, and users decide whether or not they want to click on the notification and see the full advertisement. If they do so they are rewarded with BAT. Additionally, the makers of BAT indicate that the user's data and tracking information are stored only on the user's device, ensuring that it is anonymous and private. Ultimately, the goal of the BAT and Brave browser is to provide a better advertising experience that doesn’t invade users’ privacy and gives them something for their trouble.

BAT in practice
Advertisers, Publishers/Content Creators, and Users are all rewarded in some way for their use of the Brave browser. As mentioned before, users are rewarded in BAT when they opt into viewing an advertisement. This works through the use of smart contracts. Advertisers send ads with a token payment in a locked state to users. When a user views the ad, they receive a portion of that token payment. The Brave browser also receives some of the token payments. The remainder of the payment goes to the publisher hosting the advertisement. Users can also spend BAT on several things in the browser including premium articles and products, high-resolution photos, data services, and tip content creators. Advertisers' main benefit is the anonymous user attention data that Brave provides which allows them to increase the efficiency of their advertisements.