One Year On; How I did a roadmap review of BAT (Basic Attention Token)

About me

A native of Adelaide, South Australia, I have spent the last 15 years in the UK, working in the IT / Fintech sector.

Most of my career has seen me focused on data analytics, reporting and data warehousing, working in organisations like Mitsui Bank, London Stock Exchange, Alstom and the Ministry of Justice.

In 2018 I decided to become a full-time blockchain/ crypto investor, trader, writer and evangelist.

My passion is to examine the fundamentals of the project and how they are realised through their whitepapers ,roadmaps and via the ongoing communications with their community.

Purpose of my review articles:

Please read the linked blog post. This outlines the importance of roadmaps and why they are fundamental to achieving real and lasting returns in the crypto space. https://steemit.com/bat/@ozkdawg/why-roadmaps-matter-in-the-crypto-space

This is part one of a set of planned monthly roadmap and whitepaper reviews based on projects that have reached an age of at least one year since their launch. The review will be of interest to people with a long term interest in the success of the project and to those that want to see projects move beyond the hype cycle.

The aim of these reviews is to:

• hold teams' accountable to their own roadmap and the way they communicate their achievements and failures to their community after the first year of their launch has passed

• foster robust discussion with investors, the community and the team itself on their achievements and the relevance of their original roadmap action items

•apply some long-term objectivity to projects beyond the ICO price

• provide an element of ongoing accountability and apply some of the best practices used within the institutional investing and venture capital funding areas

What is Basic Attention Token (BAT):

Basic Attention Token (BAT) wants to improve digital advertising through a token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers and users.

BAT is used in conjunction with a new browser called Brave created in part by a team that co-founded Mozilla and Firefox.

Website: https://basicattentiontoken.org/
ICO Details https://icobench.com/ico/basic-attention.
Whitepaper: https://basicattentiontoken.org/index/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf
Brave Browser: https://brave.com/download/

Industry Benchmarking; BAT's One Year On Roadmap Benchmarking Summary:

This is a review of BAT's roadmap actions at a top-level and will allow it's performance to be benchmarked across other projects as I review them.

Overall Score: 21/25 - Industry Leading

How I drill down and evaluate BAT's Roadmap Action Points:

•here I look more closely into their specific roadmap items and compare original roadmap actions vs stated achievements on the projects current Roadmap/Blog Posts.

•a Pass or Fail is based on the roadmap milestone progress as communicated back to community via their their website/blog. (it is entirely possible that the milestone information has been provided through channels such as telegram/slack/medium/reddit etc)

Background: BAT's Roadmap Documentation:

Original roadmap:
https://basicattentiontoken.org/bat-roadmap-1-0/ ( as at June 2017)


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Current Roadmap:
https://basicattentiontoken.org/timeline/ ( as at July 2018)


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BAT's One Year Anniversary Blog Post
https://basicattentiontoken.org/celebrating-bats-one-year-anniversary/


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The Test: Stated Roadmap Actions as at June 2017:

1. Recruit and retain Ethereum, machine learning, devops, project management, ad sales, UX design, and more browser development people, to build out the BAT platform in the stages outlined below.

Pass/Fail: This might be self evident from the progress of the project but it doesn't appear to be clearly highlighted on the website or on their blog. Fail

Community Relevance: High

2. As the BAT platform develops and gets integrated with Brave, evangelize other attention-economy apps, from browsers to games and beyond, to join an organization we will endow to promote user-first, private, and anonymous ads, donations, micro-paywall-piercing “link gifting”, and other token-based premium products, and share the BAT among apps other than Brave. We aim to make this a non-profit.

Pass/Fail: Uphold, Youtube, Dow Jones Media Group, Townsquare Media, Twitch have all been integrated or are due to be integrated with BAT as per the recent posts both the milestone and blog articles. Pass

Community Relevance: High

Pass/Fail: Stated aim to make this non-profit. This is not made clear in the current roadmap or on the anniversary blogpost. Fail

Community Relevance: High

3. Create a source of seed funding, with exact structure to be determined, to sponsor entrepreneurs to create new BAT apps. This may take the form of an independently judged prize system in which apps must follow the endpoint software rules and on-chain smart contracts prototyped by the development team (1) and codified by the member organization (2).

Pass/Fail: There appears to be no mention of this in further posts or roadmap milestones.Fail

Community Relevance: High

4. Fund greater user growth of Brave and other BAT apps by rewarding users who choose to opt into the BAT platform, to get to greater scale sooner with the brands and agencies buying user-private ad slots, and (where publishers partner with us) ad slots on pages. Growth requires promotion and distribution above organic rate and scale, so we will fund it with some of the sale proceeds.

Pass/Fail: The latest roadmap shows that their has been progress on all these items and they have been highlighted in both the roadmap and blog. Pass

Community Relevance: High

Summary:

Please note that the author Brendan Eich has expressly said that the original roadmap was subject to revision and would ultimately become an artefact However it's important that the original roadmap is reviewed and indeed scrutinised by the community itself.

Although some of the information I sought may have been made available via other communication channels like telegram/slack, I think that it is important that the roadmap should be a key piece of information stored on the project's own website and in perpetuity.

If you would like me to review the whitepapers/roadmaps of any ICO project that are turning one year old in July-December 2018 then please leave the project names in the comment section.

All screen grabs are courtesy of the https://basicattentiontoken.org/ website

Please note that everything on this blog post is merely educational advice and is not financial advice.