Do you love surfing the web? Do you hate ads and trackers online? Do you want to be paid for browsing the web? If you answered yes to any of these then you'll find Brave interesting. I want to tell you about the internet browser I use and one of my favourite projects in the crypto space.

What is Brave Browser?

Brave is an internet browser, just like Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge. The browser is built upon the chromium framework that Google Chrome is built on. As such all of your favorite extensions from Chrome work perfectly on Brave. You can also get Brave browser on iOS and on Android mobile devices. However the difference is in the core values of the team and the features provided.

Brave Shield & Privacy

By default Brave browser includes a feature called Brave Shield. This 'shield' protects you by stopping trackers and blocking ads. This means you don't get annoying ads and companies can't track you. The shield can also be customized to upgrade all connections to HTTPS, block fingerprinting and block all cookies if you want an even more aggressive privacy option. By blocking all these trackers and ads Brave can help load websites fast, and I mean real fast. Compared to Chrome and Firefox three times as fast out of the box with nothing extra to install.

Brave shield shows statistics about how many ads and trackers it has blocked as well as how much time Brave has saved by blocking ads, trackers and scripts. After using Brave browser for just 6 months the browser has blocked over half a million trackers and ads for me, saved me nearly 10GB of bandwidth and saved nearly 5 hours of my time. That on its own is a great reason to change to Brave, but there are a lot more I go through below.

Other unique privacy feature of Brave is that it has Tor functionality built in. Just like every other browser you can open a new private window but Brave offers an option to open a new private window with Tor. Tor hides your IP address from your ISP and sites you visit by routing you through multiple Tor nodes. You can learn more about Tor here. Aside from these features Brave also recently added IPFS integration and also a Firewall + VPN service for the iOS version of Brave.

Brave Rewards & Ads

Wait, so Brave does have ads? By default Brave browser blocks all ads. But, if you want, you can enable Brave ads. These ads are privacy respecting and are delivered to you directly from Brave at a max of 5 ads per hour. The advertisers never get any of your data as Brave is the party who matches the advertiser to the user. These ads are either a popup notification that appears or they will appear on the background of the new tab window. By viewing the ads, Brave pays you 70% of the ad revenue that they receive from the advertising companies. Wow! So you can get paid for seeing ads? Brave pays users for seeing the ads in a cryptocurrency called Brave Attention Token (BAT).

Brave Attention Token (BAT)

You don't need to click on the ads to get paid BAT. Just viewing them will count. Once you see the ads you will notice that the Brave Rewards card on the new tab window shows your estimated earnings for the month. This amount will slowly grow and once a month Brave will send it to your wallet.

To sent it to your wallet you will need to create and verify a wallet on Uphold. After doing this just type brave://rewards/ in your url bar and you will see more info about the ads as well as the payout date for your BAT. I recommend changing how many ads you see to the maximum of 5 per hour!

After being paid into your Uphold wallet you can click the triangle BAT icon at any time to check your balance.

Using BAT & Brave Creators

So what uses are there for BAT and how can I change it into other crypto or fiat currencies? As mentioned above, to get it out of your browser you will need to use uphold. But, BAT is designed not only to be earned but also to be spent. I encourage you to use BAT to tip creators. Just like BCH here on read.cash you can use BAT to show support to creators whose work you like. You can tip creators easily on Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and even to individual websites if the creator has signed up to the Brave Creator scheme.

When you use Brave, you'll see the Tip button added on various sites or you can click the triangle BAT icon at the top right to tip a creator. If you want to receive BAT yourself as a creator you can sign up as a creator on the Brave site here. Then users can tip you and you can make BAT for posting great content online.

Making money using Brave

Now, let me be clear, you aren't going to become rich using Brave. But, for a free service that I think you should be using anyway a small amount of BAT is cool to have. From using both Brave Rewards and the Brave Creator scheme for the past few months I've made nearly 180usd in BAT. I've also tipped more than half of that back to my favourite Youtubers who use Brave. I highly recommend you all do the same and tip those creators who you follow. The more people who get involved in these real life uses of crypto the more we can further their acceptance in society.

I hope from reading this you have learnt something about Brave and encourage you to try it out!