Imagine you got paid for viewing ads on the internet? Sounds unreal? 

Brave & BAT are making this happen and they are growing fast. 

Warning, after reading this, you will probably ditch your current browser and #SwitchToBrave.

Thousands of companies and services across the globe are relying on your internet activity for their business. You have the trackers and advertisers that are leveraging your information by means of cookies and analytics.

Then they use this information to place “convenient” advertisements on the websites that you visit. An awesome hotel you just looked up on booking.com shows up everywhere or maybe ‘hot singles in your area’ ad is constantly following you?

These scenarios sound familiar to you, right?

Both advertisers and publishers are making money behind your back off your information. Brave Browser leverages the blockchain technology to revolutionize this broken advertising model and finally get you paid for your attention. 

Brave browser successfully prevents trackers and advertisers from getting your data by keeping it client-side, which means it’s stored only on your PC and not in one of these huge data farms. 

What is the Brave Browser?

The Brave browser is a software product developed by the team behind Basic Attention Token (BAT) under the name of their own corporation “Brave Software Inc.” For the purposes of this article, we are treating both BAT and Brave as the same entity, largely because the core teams of both corporations are the same.

Brave, as a company is dedicated to improving the web experience for users in terms of safety, speed, and incentive. Compared to BAT, Brave has more people working on their team to develop the project. The browser itself is more than just a browser and incorporates a lot of the technology that was produced through the work under the BAT project.

Much more than a browser, Brave is a new way of thinking about how the web works. Brave is open source and built by a team of privacy-focused, performance-oriented pioneers of the web, founded by Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla.

The team is creating a new ecosystem that is based on attention, where users get a reward for their active participation in advertisement campaigns. The project promises to provide an increased level of incentive to use the platform and browser, as their main goal is not to be another browser out there.

They want to fundamentally change the landscape of digital marketing and advertising. Reinventing the internet and web browsing is a feat that takes a lot of time and represents a significant challenge, but Brave has been pushing the fold to the next level.

What is the Basic Attention Token?

The fuel for everything that happens on the Brave platform.

At the time of writing the Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) has limited usage and potential, but still represents a crucial part of the platform even at these early stages. Basic Attention Tokens are ERC20 utility tokens that are used inside the Brave platform for a couple of different reasons. They have a critical role in the experience of users, publishers, and advertisers, which includes:

• Advertisement placement
• Earning rewards as a publisher
• Getting rewards as a user

This official three-minutes video here will help you better visualize issues with the current state of advertising technology.

What are the benefits of using Brave Browser?

Up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari...and it’s just the beginning.

For regular users just like you and me, there are many benefits to use Brave instead of another browser. First of all, we get to enjoy a faster browsing experience, and websites will not “cost” so much data to access, as all trackers and advertisements are blocked by default.

The Brave Browser is utilizing a couple of key technologies to combat the unwarranted presence of trackers and advertisers in the user experience. This leads to several additional benefits including:

• Improved page load speeds
• Increased level of online privacy
• Data ownership
• Increased battery life for mobile devices

Down the line, we will also have the ability to receive advertisements directly or through publishers, but only if we have activated the corresponding features. For now, these features are still being tested on.

It is unclear when Brave and BAT will begin their advertising activities, but considering the fact that they want to preserve our privacy (and reward us), they can take their time.

How Does Brave Ads Work?

Brave blocks ads by default and in order to see the ads as seen on the official screenshot above you need to opt-in for viewing ads in browser’s settings.

Each time you view an ad, you get 70% of the ad revenue share in form of BAT tokens. You can even set how often you want the ads to show up. How fantastic is it?

This is an excellent way to on-ramp new people into the cryptocurrency space without the need of fiat currency. 

Should you use Brave?

If you ask me, then absolutely yes.

Brave is connecting the world of cryptocurrency and already provides millions of people with privacy, faster browsing experience, and continues to grow rapidly. This culturally-fueled community is bridging the gap between cryptocurrency and casual internet.

Even people that do not know anything about cryptocurrency is using Brave, predominantly for their privacy features. You can imagine the surprise on my face when I discover that somebody uses the app on their phone.

All in all, using Brave will provide you with a streamlined ad-free experience, unless you want to be shown ads. In that case you will be reimbursed for your attention.

Be proud, be Brave.

*Updated by Team Publish0x