Brave browser is a business model with an ambitious aim: to transform the way advertising on the web works. Using its pioneering Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brave enables web users to contribute directly to websites and online content that they find useful, thereby enabling content creators to earn money for their work. Furthermore, users will be rewarded for the “attention” they pay to online advertising. It’s a really groundbreaking model.
Brave’s online tipping system is already in place for streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch. Content creators can register with Brave and then users can donate to support the content they like on a one-off or regular basis. But this week Brave has announced that they’re rolling out the online tipping system to include Twitter and Reddit, so social media users can both tip – and be tipped – in BAT when reading and writing content online.
Superficially Brave appears very much like other browsers. It’s based on Google’s Chromium browser, so it looks and feels much the same as Chrome, and it’s free to download and run. But that’s where the similarities end. Brave replaces conventional online advertising with its own advertising, and removes the ad trackers which enable advertisers to collect data and record users’ online behaviour so as to target ads more effectively.
Functionally, Brave outperforms its rivals by a significant margin. On desktop, Brave loads twice as quickly as Chrome. On a phone, speeds are up to eight times faster than Google’s market leading browser. The difference is primarily a result of the removal of trackers – under the hood Brave is very similar to other browsers, but it’s simply loading far less information. Brave now has more than 3 million active users, and says it will reach 5 million by the end of 2018.
