Brave: Cryptocurrency Rewards for Using the Internet

Browsing the internet today feels like walking down the grand avenues of Buenos Aires a few decades ago. Almost every pixel seems dedicated to "selling advertising," and with good reason: it's the most profitable business on the internet. Google earned 160 billion dollars in 2019 from advertising sales alone. Facebook came close to 17 billion. "The Internet," that realm of unlimited freedom and infinite knowledge, ended up becoming a billboard.

Meanwhile, users browse the web (which we pay for), click on links and banners from devices we bought, and Silicon Valley plutocrats get richer. However, there is still hope: programmer Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and co-founder of the Mozilla Foundation, launched a new browser called Brave that blocks advertising by default and rewards users with cryptocurrency.

While Google's updated "terms and conditions" from March now allow Google to use all your data, collected from any platform for any purpose, this new browser--based on Chromium, Chrome's own code--improves privacy and security by blocking invasive advertising. Although other browsers like Chrome and Firefox offer similar functionality through add-ons, having it as a default feature in Brave provides a better experience and avoids compatibility issues.

The crypto enthusiasts of the internet

Eich's browser features a reward system for users based on BAT (basic attention token), a token that operates on the Ethereum blockchain. Users who agree to see advertising receive monthly tokens convertible to dollars. Additionally, earned BATs allow contributions to content creators: currently available on YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo, Twitch, Reddit, Github, and websites. Thus, Brave presents a decentralized alternative to services like Patreon, which doesn't work widely in Argentina since it requires foreign accounts to collect payments.

Creating a cryptocurrency wallet is the only requirement to earn rewards. Brave (available for Android, iOS, OSX, Windows, and Linux) partnered with a company that provides an easy-to-use wallet: Uphold. This journalist received 2.7 BAT after two months of browsing. At the current exchange rate, that's barely fifty cents. You won't become a millionaire using Brave, but the most interesting part is that its approach inverts the equation, offering the possibility of earning some currency. Furthermore, the ads appear as notifications, without affecting Brave's browsing interface.

Although it's still in development, earning rewards became possible months ago, which gave it a significant boost. The company announced having reached 10 million users, representing 19 percent growth since version 1.0. While Eich is no Che Guevara and Brave is not the definitive tool for the socialist revolution, as a technical solution that benefits users, it works quite well.

This article was originally published in Pagina/12 on April 24, 2020.