I have never seen a PoW minable coin where the block hashes aren't actually the proof of work (a bunch of zeros in front of the hash)
Why is bata designed this way? Just a general curiosity

Hi here is an example of a raw block:
{
"hash": "2959d2161759004644c9bda9ac37507a29b67b7bb3580ba1bcc610c3fa8b11d9",
"confirmations": 1,
"size": 241,
"height": 779555,
"version": 4,
"merkleroot": "954945425eb40dbb2fc3d2d6ddc87d92ba268dc341d0fe03e71e76246e8599a1",
"tx": [
"954945425eb40dbb2fc3d2d6ddc87d92ba268dc341d0fe03e71e76246e8599a1"
],
"time": 1506434691,
"nonce": 2002999098,
"bits": "1c02b746",
"difficulty": 94.25787966,
"chainwork": "00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000c0c4830ef0bc35",
"previousblockhash": "48e9cfa2a689877d4985f63df903a6027c1c14c35ed02107473d72fc351b607c"
}
If you are referring to chain work then an explanation is available here:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/26869/what-is-chainwork"The chainwork value is really just the total amount of work in the chain."