Brave, the open-source Chromium-based browser that features ad-blocking together with a blockchain-based digital advertising platform, has emerged from its beta. Version 1.0 encompasses iOS devices as well as Android and desktop. 

The Brave browser was pioneered by Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich and we originally reported on it in January 2016 when it was at version 0.7. Now as it launches Version 1.0, the Brave browser already has 8.7 million monthly active users across the globe

Motivated by dissatisfaction with "maladvertising", Brave promises to prioritize security by blocking third-party ads, trackers, and won't allow video to autoplay. This makes it faster and saves users' time and battery life.

Announcing the official launch of Brave 1.0 the blog post states:

The Brave open source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience, while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards.

The numbers displayed at the top of this screen reveal that Brave has blocked 117,674 ads and trackers, saved 2,846 upgrades, thus saving an estimated 59 minutes in the current brower session.

The numbers in the purple panels relate to Brave Rewards which are calculated in terms of BAT - Basic Attention Tokens, which users earn by viewing adverts and can be used to reward publishers of the content the enjoy reading. Content providers during the beta have included The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Wikipedia, and creators on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, GitHub and more. Brave Rewards is an opt-in feature that then enables Brave Ads.

According to the launch announcement:

Brave has pioneered a new blockchain-based advertising model that reforms the current system with privacy by design and 70 percent revenue share to users in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). Brave Ads, the world’s first private ad network and part of Brave Rewards, allows users to opt-in to view relevant privacy-preserving ads in exchange for earning BAT. When users opt into Brave Rewards, Brave Ads is enabled by default. Ad matching happens directly on the user’s device, so their data is never sent to anyone, and they see rewarding ads without web-wide mass surveillance. 

Here Brendan Eich introduces the way in which BAT is expected to work and how he hopes it will replace the current, broken advertising model currently in use:

To give the final words to Eich:

"Brave 1.0 is the browser reimagined, transforming the Web to put users first with a private, browser-based ads and payment platform. With Brave, the Web can be a rewarding experience for all, without users paying with their privacy.”

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