The co-founder of Mozilla, Brandon Eich, thought he wanted to change the world. At least the world of the internet and we all enter that with a browser. And since Brandon Eich already has experience with browsers, it stands to reason that he wanted to create his own browser that would turn the Internet upside down. This is exactly the browser we want to introduce to you here.
Let's start with something dry, the technical facts. Brave is based on chromium. That sounds similar to chromium, but it's not. Chromium is the technical underpinning of Chrome and other browsers and is completely open source. That means anyone could use Chromium and make their own browser if they have the will and the ability. Some popular browsers like Opera and Chrome are based on Chromium. And now also Brave.
Brave wants to protect the privacy of its users. It has a built-in adblocker and it also wants to block all scripts that would track the user (so-called tracking cookies). Furthermore Brave has a built-in function that opens a window with "Tor". Tor stands for The Onion Router. This function encrypts your IP and makes you invisible on the Internet. If you value privacy, this is a very convenient feature.
But the special thing about Brave is the function to earn money with it. Well, not directly money but you still get a reward for surfing with Brave. Sounds wonderful, but how does it work exactly?
You can sign up for Brave Rewards and get different amounts of advertising depending on your wishes. You will be rewarded for watching these ads. You will receive so called BAT from Brave. This is a new crypto currency called Basic Attention Token. For watching the advertisement you get 70% of the income the advertiser pays, which is a good amount.
The advertising that is displayed to you is personalized, as is generally the case with advertising on the Internet. But Brave promises here that this happens completely anonymously. The browser sends anonymized data about the surfing behavior to the server and then gets an advertisement that fits the surfing behavior, offered and shows it to the user. Brave promises that this data is not stored in a cloud under any circumstances, but that everything is only stored locally on the user's computer. Thus the surfing behaviour is not recorded online.
With BAT you can do different things. For example, you can sell it on an exchange and earn a few extra euros. Indirectly you can really make money with it. Or you can give it to the creators of content as a tip if you want. Brave offers two options here.
You can either tip a site directly if the site allows it. For example, you can send some BAT directly to your favorite layout artist or a streamer on Twitch.
The second option is the automatic distribution of Brave, depending on how much time you spent on a website. Brave automatically distributes a certain amount of BAT to your favorite sites, depending on your usage behavior. You can set completely individually how much you want to pay automatically.
Even if this all sounds pretty good so far, there are still some people who criticize the new browser. The biggest fear is that simply none of the users will give some BAT. This would have catastrophic consequences for many sites.
Let us imagine the following scenario: A motivated blog owner writes a wonderful article on a topic every day. He puts advertisements on his page, because he wants to earn some money with it, since a lot of work goes into a blog. Meanwhile he has enough readers to earn 300 Euros per month. He is happy about his nice extra income and is fully motivated to continue.
But now all of a sudden everybody is using Brave and everybody wants to keep the money. Well, all of a sudden his income is gone and so he loses his motivation and the blog lies idle at some point and there are no more new posts. That would be a great pity for the blog owner and for the readers.
Such a scenario is unlikely, but not to be dismissed. Even if the loyal fan community on the internet is quite generous, as you can see for example on Twitch, where donations are regularly paid to streamers to support them, it could well happen that if Brave is used extensively, some site operators would have problems with financing.
A minor point of criticism is that some sites do not work properly with Brave, but this can usually be fixed by allowing certain cookies. So if you visit a site that requires third party cookies to work, it will not work with the default settings because Brave automatically blocks these cookies.
Brave is a very exciting project that should definitely be observed. Everyone who wants to can try the browser, the use is of course free of charge. It doesn't matter what you think about the payment system of BAT, it's a good thing that in the highly competitive browser market there is finally more competition to break the dominating position of Google.
Anyone who values their privacy should definitely test the browser and make up their own mind. If you get a few BATs for it, you're welcome to take them with you. And if you also do something good for your favourite blogger with your well-deserved BAT, everyone will benefit.
Btcadspace
Start: 2023
Crypto Currency: Bitcoin
Faucet & Paid Ads
Proof of payment: Yes
