Author: Zen, PANews
Traditional Web2 platforms are often controlled by centralized companies, where the value of user-generated data and traffic is aggregated and commercialized by the platform, making it difficult for users to directly gain value from their content creation or interactions. However, according to the principles emphasized by Web3 of 'decentralization, user ownership, and value consensus', users' attention and content value should be directly controlled by the users themselves.
There are already many projects in the Web3 industry attempting to focus on user sovereignty and value distribution, and the Web3 consumer entertainment platform T-Rex is one of them. This project recently completed a $17 million Pre-Seed funding round, with investors including Portal Ventures, Framework Ventures, and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures.
T-Rex is designed specifically for consumer-level entertainment and content distribution, led by Everest Venture Group (EVG), aiming to bring mainstream internet users and content creators into the Web3 ecosystem. Through the concept of 'attention economy', it records user interaction behaviors on platforms like social media and videos on-chain and rewards them with cryptocurrency, intending to solve the issues of 'digital ghost towns' and 'mercenary users' in the blockchain ecosystem.
Targeting ordinary consumers' 'Attention Engine'
The core goal of T-Rex is to become the infrastructure of the Web3 attention layer: through a browser plugin (Chrome extension), it achieves built-in distribution and incentive mechanisms between Web2 platforms and blockchain, allowing users to naturally earn token rewards in their habitual social, video, and entertainment environments. T-Rex targets a broad user group of ordinary consumers, such as internet users who regularly use social entertainment platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter, as well as content creators and gamers, who have high engagement with entertainment content.
The T-Rex tech stack is built using the Nitro engine provided by Arbitrum Orbit, inheriting the advantages of Arbitrum's customizable chains to achieve ultra-high throughput, low latency, and extremely low transaction costs, meeting the demand for instant responses in consumer-level applications. Its core innovation is the Proof-of-Engagement (PoE) consensus mechanism: the platform discreetly captures user interaction behaviors on commonly used social platforms through the browser plugin, generating privacy-protected on-chain proofs for actions like liking, watching videos, and sharing content, automatically distributing points and token rewards. This mechanism focuses on verifying and assessing genuine user interactions, effectively distinguishing between real users and machine behaviors.
In order to enhance user experience, T-Rex is designed with a philosophy of simplifying processes and lowering barriers. Users only need to install the T-Rex browser extension to continue browsing on popular social media and video platforms, with all interactions automatically recorded and instantly exchanged for rewards, without the need to manually create a wallet or understand cryptocurrency technology. The extension is planned for release this summer, allowing users to feel like they are using a regular Web2 platform through a familiar interface, while completing Web3 on-chain processes and reward distribution in the background. The platform also provides comprehensive documentation, APIs, and SDKs for developers to simplify the development and integration of consumer-level dApps, and has established an incubation fund of approximately $8 million to support ecosystem building, technical resources, and community operations.
In terms of security, T-Rex introduces zkTLS (Zero-Knowledge Transport Layer Security) technology to protect data privacy, achieving secure connectivity between Web2 content data and Web3 reward channels. Additionally, as a chain built on Ethereum ecosystem technology, T-Rex inherits Ethereum's security and broad compatibility, enabling seamless integration with mainstream wallets like MetaMask and other Ethereum ecosystem protocols, facilitating cross-chain asset flow and the reuse of development tools.
Are token incentives + attention economy feasible?
Projects targeting user attention and converting it into cryptocurrency rewards have precedents; the Brave browser, which has been online for several years, is a representative of such projects and is also considered an early explorer of the Web3 attention economy.
Brave launched the optional Brave Rewards feature in 2019, offering rewards in the Basic Attention Token (BAT) based on Ethereum. Brave Rewards allows users to selectively view privacy-protecting ads and earn BAT rewards based on views and engagement, with Brave taking 30% of the ad revenue, while the remaining 70% is distributed to users. Users can use the BAT they earn to tip websites or content creators, withdraw to cryptocurrency wallets like Uphold and Gemini, or use it to purchase gift cards and other consumer scenarios.
According to data released recently by Brave co-founder Brendan Eich, as of April 2025, Brave's monthly active users reached 87 million, with daily active users around 36 million, indicating that its market acceptance remains considerable. Brendan stated that Brave's target for this year is to achieve 100 million monthly active users.
Although T-Rex and its philosophy aim to convert user browsing or interaction behavior on Web2 platforms into quantifiable token rewards, there are significant differences between the two in terms of business model, technical path, and ecological scope. Brave focuses on 'privacy-first advertising incentives', while T-Rex extends to all social and content interaction behaviors, attempting to promote attention incentives in larger-scale consumer application scenarios.
In summary, Brave's user growth, revenue curve, and ecological expansion all indicate that the 'attention economy' has considerable prospects in the mainstream consumer market and broad appeal among the mainstream Web2 population. T-Rex, by targeting a wider range of scenarios covering social, video, gaming, e-commerce, and lower usage barriers, may have the potential to achieve breakthroughs in the consumer-level Web3 domain.
