At Consumer Identity World Tour 2018, identity verification software company Civic announced a partnership with Brave Software, in which verified publishers using Brave’s platform and Ethereum-based Basic Attention Token (BAT) will be able to verify their identities using Civic’s interface.

We're excited to announce that we will be working with @civickey to offer secure identity verification services on our publisher platform. https://t.co/qErcA34gyd — Brave Software (@brave) September 21, 2018

An Attention-Based Payment Ecosystem

Brave’s main offering is its secure web browser, which it uses to host a group of verified content creators called “publishers” in addition to normal web browsing functions. Brave claims to cut out the middleman between content creators and their audiences by offering users the chance to pay their favorite publishers in BAT, rather than deal with advertising.

This, says Brave, lets creators take home much more of the money they make online than in an online environment like YouTube, where conventional ad revenue only creates profit when a user repeatedly hits hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views.

When someone signs up to be a verified publisher on the Brave platform, they also set up a digital wallet and receive regular payments in BAT. Users agree to pay a set amount every month, and Brave automatically keeps track of the publishers they visit the most, then divides that set amount according to the publishers whom that user has shown the most attention. Hence, “Basic Attention Token.”

Built-in Identity Verification for Creators

Under the terms of the agreement with Civic, the service will only be available to users who provide Ethereum wallets as a means of accepting payment. Those publishers will then be able to utilize Civic’s reusable “know-your-customer (KYC)” identity verification via a smartphone app.

Civic claims its service allows for verification without harvesting unnecessary data and will let publishers verify their ID via smartphone whenever they log in to collect their tokens.

Speaking on the partnership, Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, said:

“Brave and the Basic Attention Token aim to directly connect users and publishers in a transparent system to guarantee privacy and authenticity, without the intermediaries that harvest user data. Civic shares our values around privacy and protecting user information, and we’re excited to work with them to offer Civic Reusable KYC, which will be key to ensuring security and privacy on our publisher network”

According to the company, there are currently 21,000 verified publishers using Brave’s platform, and the partnership with Civic should make it easier for those publishers to verify their identity and collect their earnings from the platform.

Most recently, Brave made The Wall Street Journal’s “2018 Tech Companies to Watch” list and recently hit 10 million downloads.