The Brave Browser creates a web browsing experience that gives the user control over which ads they want to see, with the ability to earn cryptocurrency to support their favorite websites.
A new way to browse the web –
Brave believes the current web advertising model is broken. Ads are everywhere, following and targeting you from site to site collecting personal information and tracking your browsing activity. These ads can clutter webpages and create slow webpage loading times. The average person downloads around 2,000 ads and trackers every day!
The way digital advertising works today is your web activity and data is collected, packaged into a profile, and then sold to the highest bidder. This information is continually used to target you with ads.
The Brave Browser is looking to change the current system with a faster, more secure, and more private browsing experience. Without the intrusive ads or tracking. This is achieved through a combination of the Brave Browser, and an Ethereum based cryptocurrency called Basic Attention Token, or BAT for short.
How does the Brave Browser work?
The Brave Browser blocks ads or trackers that compromise your privacy. And because websites are no longer getting paid on ads no longer being seen by you, Brave makes it possible for these sites to make up for the loss revenue. This is done through two ways:
- Users can acquire and donate BAT cryptocurrency directly to their favorite websites through the Brave browser. Which then, the BAT tokens can then be cashed out by the publisher.
- Or, users can enable Brave Rewards, which is a feature built into the browser that serves ads which do not collect or sell your data. When you opt-in to Brave Rewards, the sites you visit can be automatically paid in BAT tokens you earn through watching ads that you have control over.
This creates a direct relationship between publisher, advertiser, and the user (you).
The company behind Brave won’t begin rolling out the actual Basic Attention Token rewarding for another several weeks. But it estimates participating users will be able to earn around $60 to $70 this year, and possibly over $200 in 2020.
For now, you can’t withdraw the tokens you’ve earned and convert them into cash. Instead, Brave wants you to spend your digital tokens on rewarding your favorite publishers on the internet, such as news websites (like us!) or YouTube personalities.
Google Chrome users will feel right at home –
Brave supports all of your favorite Chrome apps because the browser is built on Chromium, the open-source project that powers Google Chrome. So all of your Chrome extensions will work right out of the box without any connection to Google in the background.
What can Brave do for the future of web browsing?
This browser revenue model has real promise as a means of monetizing activity without intrusion. It’s the perfect prescription for the web we thought we were getting under the old, advertiser-driven model.
That old business model did not protect anybody. Soon enough, we discovered that advertisers and their enablers (Google, Facebook, ect) were after all the information they could get, then backpedaling with apologies and “protections” when caught in the act.
Brave’s rewards program can benefit all the benign non-profits struggling for the public interest, but which barely make budget for their web operations, and cannot afford to advertise. Brave rewards can help to keep these good causes going, even without direct financial contributions.
Even platforms like Patreon, the new web broker for content creation, is also an ideal beneficiary for Brave Rewards. Users could reward their favorite Patreon creators, and guarantee endless good content for the web. An excellent use of market appeal to support creators. if only Mozart and Michaelangelo had enjoyed the patronage delivered through Patreon!
If Brendan Eich (Founder and CEO of Brave) could do such good things with Firefox, he seems capable of re-formulating a browser like Chrome even more constructive and sophisticated. With Brave, we ordinary users can remake the web into what we hoped it would be, and create support system for the content we care about most.
How to download the Brave Browser –
You can support us here at Gadgism and download the Brave Browser through our affiliate link.
You can also show your support by donating to us through the Brave Rewards program. While you are checking out our kickass content on the Gadgism.com website, simply click the triangle BAT icon to the right of the address bar, and then select “send a tip.”
