If you are a Chrome user, you will definitely not want to lose access to all those great browser extensions that you got so used to work with. Here’s the good news — since the Brave Browser is based on Chromium (just like Google’s Chrome browser), all your extensions will still work with it.

So as you can see, Brave is committed towards an internet experience without annoying ads everywhere. But since just blocking ads will not help all the content creators out there to make a living, the team behind Brave also came up with a new method to replace the legacy system of tracking data and serving ads to people — an ecosystem called Brave Rewards.

The Brave Rewards platform enables two things:

A new method of advertising that gives data control back to the end user. A simple method for content creators to receive direct contributions from their followers.

The underlying infrastructure for both of those methods is based on blockchain technology and a native currency for the Brave Rewards platfrom — the so called Basic Attention Token, or BAT in short.

When users are using the Brave Browser, they can manually opt-in to occassionally see ads in form of a system notification popping up. You can for example choose to see ads two times every hour. The ads are not shown within the content that you are looking at, therefore not disturbing your reading experience.

What kind of ads are shown to each user depends on which page they are currently looking at, as well as your browsing history. But even in this case, your personal data is never leaving your device and advertisers never have access to it.

The cool thing now is, that when users decide to see ads every now and then, they will also receive a small payment each time an ad is shown, paid out as a small BAT balance, directly to a wallet in the browser. The users are finally being paid for giving their attention to ads and it’s up to them to decide whether or not to see ads or not. This is very different from the advertising system we see today.

The BAT balance that users are accumulating over time can then be used by them to support their favorite content creators. Either in the form of one-time tips or as automatically occuring payments, while browsing websites of creators who signed up to Brave Rewards — like me with my blog here.

The solutions from Brave enable a better experience for both creators and users, while still allowing companies to promote their products. It just cuts out them being able to track all kinds of data about your readers and annoying them when they enjoy your content.

Give it a try yourself and get started with the Brave Browser and Brave Rewards *affiliate link*.

(Through this affiliate link, when you decide to download the Brave Browser and use it for a minimum of 30 days after installation, I will receive a small pay-out in the form of BAT for it.)

Coil — Real-Time Micropayments and a Universal Subscription Model