The issue of fair distribution of funds among content creators has long roused the minds of humanity. The first time, the business model of ‘Pay to Surf’, appeared before the dot-com crash. The idea was simple - you go to the site and get the money. Before the advent of complex algorithms and global advertising networks, everything looked interesting, although it was not covered with success - not a single project has survived to this day. And so, history repeats itself with the Brave browser. It promises happiness to all market players: the advertiser’s money is distributed among the platform on which the advertisement is placed, and the user who looked at it, get a share.
With the advent of blockchain and cryptocurrency, the issue of paying for content is being voiced louder, again and again. The scheme is noble, projects sound promising, but the question of whether it can become a source of income still hangs in the air. Media hosting sites, where you can get tokens for watching and listening, are nowhere near the monsters like YouTube and Spotify. Blogs based on Steemit, a platform that pays for reading your posts, are still full of just the cryptocurrency content, and next year it’s unlikely that it will bring any revolutionary changes. So the idea of making everything being based on a browser seems attractive.
The browser seems to be a good place to integrate cryptocurrency for their subsequent adaptation. Opera is a prime example - one of the oldest browser, with a small but constant market share, is now owned by a cryptocurrency giant Bitmain. During the recent time, a crypto wallet appeared there, which in theory could be a revolutionary tool. But the age of the company or the history of it, are not of any help. Although Opera does appear in the news, it doesn’t seem to be able to take off.
There is no confidence in the Chinese, Opera is just another asset in the Bitmain portfolio. Opera historically has only a significant share in Russia, and in the rest of the world Firefox is way ahead - the latest version of Quantum was praised by the media this year, and the mobile Firefox Focus deserves attention. So, it can have ten crypto wallets and a built-in stock exchange for that matter, it’s unlikely it will help. But it provides opportunities for others to break through. It’s likely that against the background of the struggle for the safety of user data, alternative browsers have a chance. No wonder the Wall Street Journal in it’s listing of promising projects that make use of the blockchain, have mentioned Brave.
The reasons for this are rather logical - the head of Brave Software Brendan Eich - is a legend on the internet. The creator of JavaScript, one of the founders of Mozilla and the Mozilla Foundation, has worked there for many years as a CTO and this experience says a lot. A man of this magnitude cannot make a bad product. Brave at all stages of its development receives good press and attention, with the founders' personality no doubt playing a role.
Why brave and what is it good for then?
First of all, it’s faster. If you are accustomed to Chrome but are looking for a replacement for it then Brave in the crypto friendly version, inside of which is the Chromium engine. For those who use Safari or Firefox - it would be a good option to pick as a second browser which in the future may become even larger.
Secondly - Brave cuts out the advertising. Now most browsers are able to do this - everyone is becoming obsessed with protecting themselves from tracking and the safety of personal data. Adblock becomes an essential feature and a headache for publishers. So while roaming the net - you can feel in comfortable and safe.
The third argument is emotional for diehard cryptocurrency followers. This is a rare working project, promising, with an interesting business model and with tokens that for a change have some actual value. The likelihood that after reaching a critical mass, the browser itself and its tokens will acquire additional meaning, is quite high.
Today, Brave is being used by more than 3 million people. Obviously, this audience is not enough for the stable existence for users, publishers, and advertisers. The latter, by the way, have a lot of complaints towards the browser as Brave replaces other's advertising modules with its own. So there are still issues to figure out. But the audience is growing, the project is developing and sooner or later it can occupy its niche. Especially since the new reason to install Brave appear every day, and BAT tokens - which should be used to distribute advertisers' funds is a promising digital asset.
To start receiving tokens, you need to initially register your website or channel on Youtube or any other appropriate platform and then, in theory, those who have a browser installed and who have BAT tokens can share them with you. So far the emergence of a full-fledged BAT economy is far away so your resource will not start to generate income soon, or it should probably target a very specific audience. But who knows what will happen next, but just in case it’s better to be prepared.
BAT or the Basic Attention Token - has long been trading on exchanges, with the main volume provided through Binance. The price of the token on the one hand, as it should be for altcoins, follows that of the bitcoin. On the other hand, during the depression period of the market, where nothing is happening - BAT is growing. Over the past month, the price of BAT has doubled. This, firstly of all proves that among digital assets that can be considered qualitative, there are growing and volatile instances, which are also backed up by a real working product, which is rare in our time.
The rise in prices comes about as a result of the expected appearance of BAT at Coinbase, the largest U.S. stock exchange, which any crypto asset dreams of reaching. And if the creators of XRP are forced to loudly state their requests, then there is a suspicion that the listing of BAT is an independent decision. Now tokens will become available to conservative American crypto investors, which means that in the near future something interesting will happen to them.
Brave is not just the name, it’s also the quality which everyone should adopt when attempting to change the established business model, the habits, our preferred browser which for most users is a lot of stress. We won’t start guessing, but today Brave is the main browser of the cryptocurrency world ahead of us.