TL;DR

• Brave Browser is the ideal Web3 onboarding tool — the pitch is simple, and highly compelling: browse the internet → get paid when you see an ad.

Full Story

So, Brave Browser is in the news again.

This time it’s because they’re integrating Solana wallets into their browser — allowing users to securely store their $BAT (Brave’s native token) — and it’s serving as a stark reminder that:

We don’t talk about Brave Browser enough.

And we should! Because it’s the ideal Web3 onboarding tool for non technical folks — the pitch is simple, and highly compelling:

Browse the internet → get paid when you see an ad.

Here’re the basic mechanics of it…

In Web2, we had two options as far as tracking/advertising went:

1. Suck it up and accept it.

2. Install an ad blocker (and take money away from creators that rely on ad money).

Brave Browser reimagines those options to look like this:

1. Turn off ads and tracking.

2. Turn on ads, while staying anonymous AND getting paid (alongside creators) to be advertised to.

Ok...but how are the ads relevant if you're anonymous? And how does the payment system work??

RE: ad relevancy…

The Brave team realized they can still deliver relevant ads with a much smaller amount of information.

E.g. If someone spends a lot of time reading Business Insider, watching videos on how to better their golf swing, and checks Yahoo Finance on the daily...

That's enough to suggest that they might be partial to ads selling financial services and pastel polo shirts.

As for the payment system:

Advertisers buy ad space using the $BAT token → new, less invasive ads are placed in the browser window where Google and Facebook's used to be → the ad dollars are split between Brave, creators/publishers, and users.

Helluva concept!