Brave Browser is a new generation of web browser focusing on speed, privacy and peer2p economy for digital content creation. It is a free and open-source web browser based on Chromium and available on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS. The company was co-founded by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and a co-founder of Mozilla.

Browse the web safer and faster

Brave is different from other browsers as it provides a built-in ads and tracker blockers which removes all those small components (ads trackers, third-party cookies, malwares, etc.) injected in web page to capture and understand your habits and behaviour on the web and serve you what you want. On one side, it is a good thing as large advertisers like Google or Facebook can surface the best content for you but on the other hand, the tracking provides to advertisers a priceless gold mine of personal and private information and often considered as integral part of the global surveillance as we know today.

So Brave blocks all of that automatically which has two main direct benefits: - Faster browsing experience: there is therefore less content to download (no ads or trackers) before accessing a website. [2x faster on desktop - 8x on mobile] - Improved privacy and safety: it provides anonymity over ads campaigns while browsing the web and also enforce web encryption (HTTPS) to prevent passive or injection attack.

Brave browser homepage dashboard

This feature is called Brave shields and can be configured globally (in Settings / Brave shields defaults) or specifically for the website you currently visit with the Brave icon at the right side of the URL bar. It shows a popup with the various indicators of the shield (ads and trackers blocked, encrypted connections, cookies and scripts) and the ability to enable/disable the shield entirely or partially for this site.

Brave shield

Brave Rewards System for Content Creators and Users

Brave Rewards is an optional and anonymous donation system integrated directly into the Brave desktop and mobile browser in order to support content creator in different ways. It uses a ERC20 crypto-currency called BAT (Basic Attention Token) to enable tipping (one-time or recurrent) between the user and a verified publisher (content creator).

Consequently Brave enables a transparent, decentralized and more efficient system to fairly reward content creators across the web without intermediary. This strategy goes against the existing system of digital advertising which is used by most of the content creators but is proven inefficient for them as overrun by middlemen, trackers and fraud.

On the user side, Brave Rewards can be enabled going in Settings / Brave Rewards or brave://rewards.

Enable Brave Rewards

Once enabled, this setting page allows to customise and configure Brave Rewards (enable Ads, Auto-contribute, etc.), see the User's tipping history and manage a BAT wallet.

Tipping

Brave Rewards and tipping banner

At any time, the user can simply click on the BAT icon next to the Shield icon to directly tip the website he is currently visiting. We can see if the website is already a Brave verified publisher or not, if not a tip can still be sent but it will be pending until someone claims it.

By clicking on Send a Tip..., it is possible then to send the tip in BAT tokens (1.0, 5.0 or 10.0 BAT). It is even possible to setup a recurring monthly payment.

Wallet

Brave Browser embeds a crypto-wallet which is centrally managed by Uphold, a Digital money exchange which is used (I believe) for regulatory compliance and ease funding via Bitcoin, Litcoin, Ethereum or BAT transfer. However, it is an anonymous Uphold account which in theory can be controlled via the wallet recovery key.

Brave has now included the ability to withdraw BAT in addition to depositing. To enable withdrawals from the local Uphold.com wallet, the wallet must be verified. Users must complete Uphold.com KYC requirements to become verified. The other option is to integrate a supported hardware wallet into the Brave wallet. Details for hardware wallet management can be found here and local Brave wallet verification and hardware wallet setup can be found here.

Brave Wallet

Auto-Contribute

Based on your local browsing history only (number of visits and time spent on sites), Brave proposes to automatically distribute your BAT tokens to content creators with an Auto-Contribute feature.

Brave Rewards - Auto-Contribute

On the publisher side, in order to receive Brave rewards from your audience, you first need to register and be verified for one or more channels (websites, YouTube or Twitch channel) via https://publishers.basicattentiontoken.org.

Brave Publisher dashboard

Interestingly, it is possible to customise your Tipping banner with logo, name, description, links, etc.

Brave Publisher - Tipping Banner

Finally, in terms of payment, the publisher is required to set up an Uphold account with KYC. This part shows obviously the current limits of Brave and BAT as a decentralised peer2p product. Regulations and mass user adoption must be the reason of this choice...

Brave Ads

As explained, Brave removes trackers used by advertisers to targets users. In order to replace this, they are trying to revolutionise the advertising space with a new model focused on relevance and privacy.

Users will be paid to watch ads. While browsing the web, the users could receive notifications to watch ads, or see ads on a website (in the future) and consequently receive 15% [for publisher ads] or 70% [for users ads] of the revenue generated to their Brave wallet. As we know, the wallet is currently unidirectional, so this earning can only be used to send tips to your favorite websites.

The rest of the 15% will be then shared between the advertisers, the publishers and Brave.

Ads matching happens locally on the user device via a browsing history learning algorithm and never shared those information with anyone, thus respecting privacy!

Brave Rewards - Enable Ads

Conclusion

To conclude, Brave Browser provides a privacy-first solution to build a sustainable ecosystem for the web by enabling peer2p value sharing.