You might have heard that there is a new web browser on the block that is fast, secure and crypto friendly. However, it didn't come out in 2019, it just started building more hype this year. BRAVE has been around for about 4 years. It was founded on May 28, 2015 by Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy.
On January 20, 2016 the company launched their first version of Brave with an ad blocking feature. However, over the past year Brave has really picked up steam and gain a solid following and user base.
In this article I am going to break down the basics.
- What is the Brave Browser?
- What makes Brave different?
- What is under the hood?
- What are BATs(Basic Attention Token)
- Where can I download it?
What is the Brave Browser?
Brave is a more-or-less standard browser that lets users navigate to websites, run web apps and display or play online content. Like other browsers, it is free to download and use, remembers site authentication information and can block online ads from appearing on sites. Now the project was started and led by the same people who helped create Javascript and Mozilla.
What makes Brave different?
What sets Brave apart is its aggressive anti-ad attitude. The browser was built to strip online ads from websites and its maker's business model relies not only on ad blocking, but on replacing the scratched-out ads with advertisements from its own network.
It's as if a new TV network announced it would use technology to remove ads from other networks' programs, then rebroadcast those programs with ads of its own devising, ads that it sold.
Brave also eliminates all ad trackers, the often-tiny page components advertisers and site publishers deploy to identify users so that they know what other sites those users visit or have visited. Trackers are used by ad networks to show products similar to ones purchased, or just considered, leading to the meme of persistently seeing the same ad no matter where one navigates.
What is under the hood?
Yes, Brave is competing with other major browsers, but guess what?! It's built upon Chromium. The back-end technologies that power Chrome - including the Blink rendering engine and the V8 JavaScript engine - also power Brave.
On iOS, Brave instead relies on the WebKit, the open-source foundation that also powers Apple's Safari browser. WebKit is required as the backbone of any third-party browser submitted to Apple's App Store.
What are BATs (Basic Attention Token)
What is Basic Attention Token…
Advertising is one of the most critical revenue models for most of the businesses online, however, to put it mildly, the advertising industry is a dinosaur. The model has not changed for years and is desperately in need of an overhaul. This is where Brendan Eich’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) is looking to change the game completely. BAT is looking to monetize attention by paying users for watching ads.
BAT is short for Basic Attention Token; it is a digital advertising token which is built on the Ethereum blockchain. The purpose of the BAT token is to create an ad exchange marketplace which will connect the advertisers, publishers, and users in a decentralized manner. The purpose of BAT is to monetize user attention and remove all the other needless expenditure related to ad networks.
The BAT token takes care of the following:
- Serves as a unit of exchange by cutting out the middlemen
- Rewards users, publishers, and advertisers.
- Users get paid for giving attention to ads.
- Publishers get a portion of the ad revenue as is the norm.
- Advertisers get better ROI for their content.
The BAT team created Brave, an in-house native browser which is integrated with the Bat system. BAT tokens are the native currency that will be used by the system.
Where can I download it?
Brave can be downloaded from this page of Brave Software's site.
The page should automatically recognize the device's operating system and offer the appropriate version. If it doesn't, select from the choices at the bottom of the page: Windows x86 or Windows x64, Windows 7 or later; macOS 10.9 or later; or Linux x64 for Debian, Fedora, Ming, openSUSE and Ubuntu.
Mobile versions of the Brave browser (for iOS and Android) are available in the App Store and in Google Play, respectively.
