Brave (web browser)


Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. It blocks ads and website trackers, and provides a way for users to send cryptocurrency contributions in the form of Basic Attention Tokens to websites and content creators.
As of 2019, Brave has been released for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. The current version features five search engines by default, including their partner, DuckDuckGo.

History

On 28 May 2015 CEO Brendan Eich and CTO Brian Bondy founded Brave Software. On 20 January 2016 Brave Software launched the first version of Brave with an ad-blocking feature, and announced plans for a privacy-respecting ad-feature and a revenue-sharing program.
In June 2018 Brave released a pay-to-surf test-version of the browser. This version of Brave came preloaded with approximately 250 ads, and sent a detailed log of the user's browsing activity to Brave for the short-term purpose of testing this functionality. Brave announced that expanded trials would follow. Later that month Brave added support for Tor in its desktop browser's private-browsing mode.
Until December 2018 Brave ran on a fork of Electron called Muon, which was marketed as a "more secure fork". Nevertheless, Brave developers moved to Chromium, citing a need to ease their maintenance burden. Brave Software released the final Muon-based version with the intention that it would stop working and instruct users to update as its end-of-life approached.
In June 2019 Brave started testing a new ad-blocking rule-matching algorithm that Brave claims is on average 69 times faster than the previous implementation in C++. The uBlock Origin and Ghostery algorithms inspired the new algorithm.
Brave launched its stable release, version 1.0, on 13 November 2019 while having 8.7 million monthly active users overall. At the time, it had approximately 3 million active users on a daily basis. Brave 1.0, running on Android, iOS, Windows 10, macOS, or Linux, integrated "almost all of Brave's marquee features across all platforms", according to engadget.

Business model

Brave uses its Basic Attention Token to drive revenue. Originally incorporated in Delaware as Hyperware Labs, Inc. in 2015, the company later changed its name to Brave Software, Inc. and registered in California, where it is headquartered.
By August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, and the Digital Currency Group.
In November 2019, Brave launched an ad network which returns a 70 percent revenue share to users. The initial advertisements were coming from partners like Vice, Home Chef, ConsenSys, Ternio BlockCard, MyCrypto and eToro.

Features

Basic Attention Token

The "Basic Attention Token" is an open-source, decentralized ad exchange platform based on Ethereum.
In an initial coin offering on 31 May 2017, Brave Software International SEZC sold 1,000,000,000 BAT for a total of 156,250 Ethereum in less than 30 seconds. An additional 500,000,000 BAT was retained by the company, to be used to promote the adoption of the platform.
In early December 2017, the company disbursed the first round of its 'user growth pool' grants: a total of 300,000 BAT was distributed to new users on a first-come first-served basis.

Brave Rewards

Since April 2019, users of the Brave browser can opt in to the Brave Rewards feature, which sends BAT micropayments to websites and content creators. Site owners and creators must first register with Brave as a publisher. Users can either turn on auto-contribute, which automatically divides a specified monthly contribution in proportion to the time spent, or they can manually send a chosen amount while visiting the site or creator.
Users can choose to earn BAT by viewing advertisements which are displayed as notifications by the operating system of their computer or device. Advertising campaigns are matched with users by inference from their browsing history; this targeting is carried out locally, with no transmission of personal data outside the browser, removing the need for third-party tracking. In addition or alternatively, users can buy or sell BAT through Brave's relationship with Uphold Inc., a digital currency exchange operator.
The first version of the micropayments feature, launched in 2016, was called Brave Payments and used Bitcoin. Advertisements were shown in a separate browser tab.

Critical reception

In January 2016, in reaction to Brave Software's initial announcement, Sebastian Anthony of Ars Technica described Brave as a "cash-grab" and a "double dip". Anthony concluded, "Brave is an interesting idea, but generally it's rather frowned upon to stick your own ads in front of someone else's". However, Ars Technica has since become a member of Brave's revenue-sharing program. TechCrunch, Computerworld, and Engadget termed Brave's ad replacement plans "controversial" in 2016.
In February 2016, Andy Patrizio of Network World reviewed a pre-release version of Brave. Patrizio criticized the browser's feature set as "mighty primitive," but lauded its performance: "Pages load instantly. I can't really benchmark page loads since they happen faster than I can start/stop the stopwatch".
In April 2016, the CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, David Chavern, said that Brave's proposed replacement of advertising "should be viewed as illegal and deceptive by the courts, consumers, and those who value the creation of content".
In April 2017, TechWorld praised Brave's "great speeds and advanced ad-tracking controls", but said that its "extension functionality is still lacking".
In August 2019, Wikipedia joined over 240,000 verified publishers.
In November 2019, CNET reviewed the newly released 1.0 version of Brave. They praised the speed, saying "Brave is hands-down the fastest browser I've used this year on any operating system, for both mobile and desktop. Memory usage by the browser is far below most others, while website loading is far faster." They also said battery usage could be reduced by using the browser – "With less strain on resources comes less strain on your device's battery life as well." However, they had concerns that the user base is still far below Chrome, and thus it may not be able to build out its ad system fully yet, saying – "The browser will need more users, however, to truly build out its new ad system: while 8 million people is a good start, it will still need to compete with Google Chrome's billion-plus users".
A February 2020 research report published by the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin found Brave to be the most private browser in terms of phoning home: "In the first group lies Brave, in the second Chrome, Firefox and Safari, and in the third group lie Edge and Yandex."

Controversies

Brave browser collecting donations on behalf of content creators

In December of 2018 British YouTube content creator Tom Scott stated that he does not receive any donations collected on his behalf by Brave browser. In a tweet, he stated "So if you thought you'd donated to me through Brave, the money will not reach me, and Brave's terms say that they may choose to just keep it for themselves. It looks like they're 'providing this service' for every creator on every platform. No opt-in, no consent." In response, Brave amended the interface with a disclaimer for each creator who hasn't signed up with Brave and promised to consider adding "an opt-out option for creators who do not wish to receive donations" and "switching the default so users cannot tip or donate to unverified creators". Critics stated that the system should be opt-in and not opt-out, that the disclaimer does not clearly state absence of any relation with the creators and suggests that creator begun process of signing up with Brave. Two days after the complaint, Brave issued an update to "clearly indicate which publishers and creators have not yet joined Brave Rewards so users can better control how they donate and tip" and in January of 2020 another update to change the behavior of contributions and tips. They are now held in the browser and transferred if the creator signs up within 90 days - otherwise they are returned to the user. Tom Scott tweeted about the changes saying "These are good changes, and they fix the complaints I had!".

Insertion of referral codes

On June 6, 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting".
Brave released a new version on June 8, which disables the auto-completion to partner links according to Brave. On June 9, Brave published a blog post, explaining the issue and apologizing.