The Brave web browser is a really interesting experiment. For users it offers an out of the box privacy setup that blocks advertising/tracking. The browser’s rendering engine is Chromium based so website loading/rendering/compatibility performance is comparable to Chrome.
Brave’s idea of a newer and better internet is one where both users and sites are supported by using a cryptocurrency called the “Basic Attention Token”. The idea of the BAT token is to have a currency that is used to pay people for their attention. This means users can watch ads from Brave and receive BAT cryptocurrency just for watching.
Sites and content creators are also given BAT tokens by Brave based on how long users are viewing or “paying attention” to their content. Users may also manually tip at any time with the built-in wallet.
In this article we will take a closer look at Brave and the BAT cryptocurrency and discuss.
Brave Browser
User Interface
The Brave web browser is based on Chromium. Chromium is the web rendering engine by Google used in Chrome so Brave very much looks/feels/performs as Chrome would.
Brave also implements key features that traditionally helped Chrome get to the #1 spot including cloud sync and support for extensions.
Let’s take a look at the UI:
Ad Blocker
The ad blocker that Brave comes with is very good. It typically blocks more sites than a typical adblocker plugin installed on Chrome.
Here is the popup for the Brave ad blocker ran on a typical website:
Script blocking is also available in the above dialog. You can enable this toggle to block all scripts on the page (basically like NoScript).
Built in Tor (.onion) Support
Brave has The Onion Router (Tor) included. This allows you to help mask your identity and also to access .onion sites (commonly called the dark web). This allows you to not have to use something like the “Tor Browser” application and can simply open a Tor window within Brave. The feature can be accessed by pressing Alt+Shift+N or by accessing it through the here:
Brave Rewards
Brave allows you to earn BAT currency by viewing ads. You can set the frequency of ads from 1 per hour up to 5 per hour. The options dialog looks like this:
When an ad is available a small notification window pops up. If you click the notification the ad opens and you get a small amount of BAT. I clicked one and got 0.05 BAT even after closing the window about 5 seconds later. If you want to earn the most BAT possible change your ads per hour to the maximum (5).
After viewing one ad my rewards window now looks like this:
You can see that I now have 0.05 BAT earnings which will be paid out monthly. My next payment date is August 5th.
Note that Brave also sometimes does BAT airdrops you can claim which will also show up as a notification. These grant BAT to people using Brave browsers with the intention that you tip it to Brave content creators to help the project thrive.
Basic Attention Token (BAT)
The basic attention token is not a coin that you can mine like Bitcoin. It is issued by the Brave entity and can be readily exchanged for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and others on various cryptocurrency exchanges.
Brave also supports sending several cryptocurrencies right to your Brave wallet (they will handle the conversion for you automatically). Here is what the deposit/exchange page looks like:
Learn more about the Basic Attention Token (BAT) from the the official Basic Attention Token (BAT) web site. (https://basicattentiontoken.org/)