A “Brave” new web browser that pays user
Big companies and organizations such as Microsoft, Twitch, KFC and Etsy are supporting the crypto market by accepting payments in digital coins already in some parts of the world. Doesn’t matter if you are fond of cryptocurrencies, you are going to own many in the coming future. In fact, You can own one crypto asset right today.
Releasing a new web browser might seem like wasteful effort in already saturated market by Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari. As, Chrome currently has established 77% of the market and the runner up Safari hold the 8%, followed by string of small chunks of shares by other browsers. But, the new kid in block — Brave web browser has some tricks up it’s sleeves.
What is Brave Browser?
From the guy who gave the world JavaScript and Firefox — Brendan Eich, comes a user’s privacy-centric browser that disables trackers and ads and pays user for viewing Brave ads. This a disruptive market strategy, where the Brave team is leveraging the power of Cryptocurrency and the need of privacy where users are constantly being tailed to earn profits. It is redefining the experience of browsing by paying users in Basic Attention Token (BAT). Users getting paid money for seeing ads seem right because companies have made billion dollar industries of out it but most of the users get a little to none.
Brave Browser comes with a crypto wallet that stays on your computer or mobile phone, which gets added with more assets when a user opts to view these ads discreetly. User can transfer their fund to an Uphold account from where they can convert it to the currency of desire.
The application UI is very similar to that of Google Chrome, and that is because it is based on an open-source project called as “Chromium”. The same framework that Chrome is also based upon. Therefore, this uncanny resemblance makes it very easy for the Chrome users to get familiarized with it quickly. For non chrome users, there would not be much of a difference as Brave follows the basic design paradigm of most web browsers.
Upsides
Apart from being getting paid, is it really worth it to use Brave as your daily browser?
A comparison between Brave and other browsers heads on in terms of speed, Brave rises as victorious. At least, that is what they claim. Brave claims that it achieve faster speed than others by disabling trackers and ad scripts, which reduce the page loading time and is less extensive when it comes to RAM consumption. I didn’t noticeably see a difference, but I didn’t have any complaints either regarding this. But, I did notice relatively lesser RAM consumption by the browser which is definitely a big upside for many.
There are few more features that set it apart from the giants. Brave browser has in built Tor Onion service. That means you can open a tor tab and take your privacy to a level above. Tor enables the user to be in the blindsight of your Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as your workplace and school. However, this service still has some bugs since in February 2020 it was discovered that Brave was unintentionally exposing Tor users IP addresses. It will take some amount of time for user to feel confident before using this feature as the security fixes are coming up.
In January 2021, Brave announced that they have now integrated Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) which is different than how usual internet works. IPFS is a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol built to make internet decentralized. Means when a user loads a page, it can be reached through multiple nodes available instead of just one centralized server. This increases the availability of a content and offloads server costs.
Lastly, if you are someone who uses chrome extensions on daily basis then you need not to think twice about it. As, all chrome extensions work on Brave. Extensions can be added to the browser from Chrome Web Store.
Catches
I am not trying to oversell anything. Just stating the facts for what it is. Many people would switch to Brave just for the incentives. So, can you actually make money with it?
I have been using Brave for a month now. During this time, I have managed to collect 3.085 Basic Attention Token (BAT) and 2.89 Basic Attention Token (BAT) on my other computer. Which Equates to roughly 3 dollars in a month. That doesn’t seem that bad but honestly also not that great considering the fact that there will be some commission by the Uphold account the total amount will be reduced.
Also not to forget that as BAT is a cryptocurrency, it’s value to a dollar tends to change over time depending on how many people are betting their money on BAT.
Since, a year the asset value has increased but the user and content creator will make a significate amount of money only when the value increases by a margin. For, that it has to beat the popular browsers in terms of usage.
The trends has increased over the past few years favoring towards the Brave browser. But when you add Chrome into this equation, things change.
Right now Brave only captures 0.05 % of the market and still has a long way to go.
Editor: Nancy Jinia Basumatari