I had heard about the Brave Browser a couple months earlier, around the December time-frame, and I did look at it then, but for some reason the software was blocked from earning in California so I dropped it. In any case, since then whatever was the block has been cleared, so I decided to try it again.

First off, the download and install was pretty snappy and clean. Brave is designed very similar to Google's Chrome, so I see a lot of functional similarities between the two. Of course, where they differ big is that Chrome tracks everything you do for Google's databases, and Brave supposedly keeps things private (at least that's what they say in their advertising).

Second, getting the BAT earning feature going was confusing as heck. The settings part was simple enough one found in Brave Rewards in the Browser, just a simple toggle in the setting screen to turn it on. However, trying to figure out the wallet itself from that point forward is where things got messy. I ended up losing a little bit of start BAT in the process having to redo things to get them working right. Remember, a key factor is that the user has to manually turn on the earning function in the settings; it's not automatic.

There's actually three wallets involved. The first one is in the Brave browser itself and is not a real wallet per se. I would argue it's more of a holding account for earnings as they happen. This is tracked as potential BAT earned, which then actually gets awarded later in the month after an earning cycle is over. The second is an actual wallet created in Brave that looks very similar to Metamask and is probably running in the same platform, just specific to the Brave browser instead. A user has a couple of choices under Crypto Wallets (Ledger etc.), but the built-in one is pretty easy to work with, and it can toggle the same networks as Metamask original.

This wallet functions like a bona fide online wallet with what seems like all the basic features of receive, send and exchange similar to the regular Metamask wallet. However, it runs fine on Firefox, which I use, versus regular Metamask which only works on Chrome for me, weird.

The third wallet is the connection to Uphold, a required wallet with the Brave browser where BAT seems to get transferred when one wants to take it out of the Browser and actually use it, sell it, etc. I've read some articles already about delays regarding the Uphold side, so I'll defer to them since I haven't really used it yet. However, to even get started with Uphold one does have to have an account set up already for anything to work. This link is then manually validated repeatedly every 90 days or so to maintain the connection to Brave.

As for the earning side of Brave, it seems so far to just be the main page one sees when entering the Browser or creating a new tab. The basic payout is something like 0.01 of a BAT, basically a faucet level, and it seems capped at 20 ads total per day, but I could see how this still can add up over 30 days. I have yet to see how the actual payout system works or whether I'll be eligible yet since the next turnover is somewhere in the first week of July.

Brave Browser also gives one the ability to reward sites and content creators who are signed up with Brave to be tipped in BAT via your selection or automatic donation. The system also has a donation cut built into the Browser and set to "on" by default in the settings. So, if you want to make sure you're getting your full BAT and not sharing it out without knowing, you will want to turn off that feature by lowering the donation setting to 0.

So far, I'm impressed with the tool, and it does work generally well as a browser. I like that one can create icons for different links on the home page, but the search function is a little less intuitive unless you're a typical Chrome type, putting search queries in the address bar. We'll see how this turns out, but for now I'll give Brave two thumbs up in the mindless easy earning crypto category for a preliminary win.