Inferno picks: Brave and BAT

crypto.inferno (67)in #blockchain • 6 years ago

Brave, the privacy-centric browser, comes with blockchain-enabled rewards in the form of BAT: Basic Attention Token. This set-up is fantastic, for the simple reason that works beautifully – and we await full roll-out of BAT with interest.

There’s a war raging for your eyeballs, if not your soul, and there’s a good chance you’re losing it. Websites are cluttered with ads that sap your bandwidth, slow your UX and distract you at every turn. They’re how the web is monetised, and they ruin it.

Disclaimer

Crypto investment is risky and the markets can be highly volatile. Do your own due diligence before buying. No responsibility is accepted for investment decisions made on the basis of this analysis.

Brave is a browser that was designed to address these issues. It’s based on Chromium, so in one respect it’s nothing special. But then, Chrome is too, and it’s totally decent – and way ahead of Firefox or Explorer.

There are two massive benefits to using Brave: speed and privacy. The two go together. Brave blocks a load of ads, which means they’re not sucking your bandwidth to load data or send it back to their evil masters – so it’s a lot faster too. Up to 3x faster, according to their site. If you want additional privacy, you can open a Private window with Tor, which means: ‘Brave never remembers what you do in a Private Window. With Tor, your browsing is also hidden from your ISP or employer, and your IP address is hidden from the sites you visit.’ But don’t try to buy drugs from the darkweb, because drugs are bad, hmkay?

Downloading and setting it all up is incredibly easy. Brave will import all your bookmarks, forms and passwords from other browsers, if you want it to, meaning everything just works when you open the site (except, oddly, for Discord, where it demanded the password again). When you import everything, it encourages you to close the old browser, like you’re washing your hands of it. And you just might be, because with speed, privacy and ad blocking, there’s no reason to go back. (There’s also a mobile browser, which we haven’t yet tried out.)

Brave has proven very popular already, which perhaps isn’t surprising since it was co-founded by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, and raised $35 million in ETH in 30 seconds back at the height of the ICO boom in 2017. It had a strong userbase right from the start – but it’s built on that impressively, with 5x user growth over 2018 and now 5.5 million active users.

Brave’s most recent update is well worth a read, boasting new partnerships and integrations, and a steady increase in the potential market for BAT: the Basic Attention Token, which will be used to reward users for watching relevant ads from publishers – while maintaining the user’s privacy, and only if they opt in. Given that BAT is currently trading at an all-time low, the whole package is starting to look very attractive (not trading or investment advice). When Brave Ads launches properly and their full roll-out occurs, it could be like turning the taps on.

In short, Brave is one we’ve somehow missed until now, but are genuinely impressed. The browser has a great UI, and provides a far better experience without any obvious downside. Meanwhile, the BAT economic model is looking very compelling over the long term. Do your own research, but make sure you do take a look.

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