Brave Rewards or how to enter the world of cryptocurrencies without risking your money

The world of cryptocurrencies is nothing new but it has attracted attention since the famous Bitcoin has reached so much value and the blockchain has been applied to new uses such as merchandising and collecting thanks to the NFT.

However, as we say, this is not new.

For some time we have had software that uses the blockchain as an operating tool or as an incentive to work with Free Software. About the latter comes to mind the Brave web browser or Brave Browser. Brave is a web browser that uses the free Chromium project as the basis for the browser and has additions and improvements intended for the end user.

One of those improvements is the use and reward of a token or as it is commonly called, the BAT cryptocurrency.

Brave was developed by Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla. Brendan Eich, tired of the new direction Mozilla Firefox was taking and the insistence of the rest of the Mozilla Foundation on keeping the old Firefox engine and not changing it, decided to abandon Mozilla and create Brave.

Brave was not only a chromium but it also added useful functions for users such as an ad blocker, a lower consumption of ram memory or the use of containers to avoid security problems. Despite all this, Brave was not very well received, so Brandan Eich and his new team decided to focus on the problem of advertising, arriving at a very interesting solution: blocking third-party ads such as those of Google or other companies but in exchange , for creators and those who make a living from advertising, offer an alternative advertising system that is not invasive for the end user, this is how Brave Rewards was born a tool that is gradually gaining more followers and making Chrome or Firefox users change their web browser to Brave.

What are BATs?

BAT stands for Basic Attention Token, or Basic Attention Token. It is an ethereum technology token that uses its technology to serve ads anonymously and pay the user or advertiser based on interest.

It sounds weird, to me personally it sounded weird the first time it was announced on Brave, but when you start using it things become clearer and more normal.
Currently, if we browse a website that has an ad system or ads, our computer generates cookies that remain there and can be used by any website or ad system. Thanks to the BAT, announcements are encrypted and do not allow or send information or receive it, so the user is safe and cannot be used by another website or advertiser. In addition, the system creates non-annoying ads that can be used by the user or not. Brave Rewards and BATs are free to choose, the user can decide at any time to suspend it, not use it or use it.

Regarding the advertiser, through traditional systems, the advertiser paid the same if the user saw his ad or if he did not see it. Now, thanks to the use of this ethereum token, the advertiser only pays for the ad that does reach the user, having a lower expense, because you really pay for the "attention" and not for the broadcast of advertising.

For all this, many users recommend Brave, as it is an alternative that respects the privacy of the end user and this does not mean that the advertiser has to disappear.

Installation

To get BAT's or use the Brave Rewards program, we must first have the web browser installed. We can get the BAT's, as we have said, by buying with real money or by using the web browser.

Brave is a cross-platform web browser, it is currently developed for Windows, macOS and for Gnu / Linux.

Within the Gnu / Linux world, Brave is present for 64-bit architectures ( Who still doesn't know what architecture it has?). Like many other programs, Brave can be installed via repositories and the terminal. Although there is also a version in snap format. The Brave team recommends doing the first install as it updates more than the snap format. Exists a very detailed installation guide and explained by each of the most popular distributions that exist.

My Listings

Well. We already know what the BAT's are (we will see it often when you enter the Brave settings), we already know how to install the browser on our computer. And now that?
After installing and opening Brave, an installation wizard will appear that will help us step by step to configure our web browser. It is in Spanish and explains everything in a simple way. And one of those steps consists of activating or not "Brave Rewards". We can activate it now or do it later, Brave gives you that freedom.

In case of not activating it and doing it later, to do so we have to go to "Settings" which is in the browser menu or directly to the "Brave Rewards" menu, both take you to the same place, to this window:

In this window we find all the Brave Rewards settings in two columns. In the column on your right we find a panel or box with all the BAT tokens that you have won, what you have been able to buy, what you have been able to distribute and access to the wallet Uphold, a cryptocurrency wallet with which Brave works by default and that stores our BAT's.

The problem or drawback that I see with this wallet is that You will not be able to verify it until it reaches 25 BAT'sAlthough if we are not in a hurry, it is not a very serious problem either. UpHold allows you to pass cryptos to other accounts or wallets, so once we have the account verified and we want to work the BAT's with other wallets that support it, we transfer the BAT's and that's it.

In the column on our left we have five boxes or blocks arranged one above the other, the blocks are: code for iOS Rewards, Ads, Auto-Contribution, Monthly Contributions, and Tips.

The most important of all is Ads since with the switch button that you have, you activate or deactivate the Brave Rewards program.

Between the switch button and the title of the block there is a configuration button that allows us to tell the system how many ads we want per hour.
We have a fork of 1 ad and 5 ads per hour. Obviously, if we want 0 ads, we don't want the system and if we want more than 5 ads per hour, the system would become annoying for navigation and would be effective for the end user. Once we have marked the number of ads we want, we go to the bottom of the block and we will see when the BAT's are transferred to our wallet, how many BAT's we have earned and how many announcements we have received in the last month, including a history of the announcements received during the last 7 days.

This is a very interesting block that I personally use the most because it gives me an overview of the system at a glance.

Automatic contribution

Automatic contribution is a block that is under Ads and that allows us to be thousands of registered creators. The process is simple: we mark an amount of BAT's per month in this block. We have to have the amount of BAT's since they are not on credit. Once marked, we leave it working and surf the Internet with Brave. At the end of the month, These BAT's will be distributed among the creators visited based on the visits we make, of the attention given.

The section, keeping the spirit of the web browser, will indicate the registered creators to whom we have donated that amount of BAT's and the attention given by which we have given that amount. The creator must be registered in the program but we will not know any data, except the user with whom they registered or they from us, except that we are a user that we have donated to them.

Monthly contributions

Brave aims to combine user privacy and advertising earnings, which is why this block, which is below the Automatic Contribution block, is so interesting and important. The block of monthly contributions allows us to select a creator or registered website, of all those that we have visited and are registered and donate or pay a monthly amount of BAT's as a form of crowdfunding within the budget that we have marked in the previous block. This system only uses the BAT's that we have in the account and automates it in such a way that if we want a YouTube content creator to receive a monthly amount of 20 BAT's or a percentage of all the monthly donations we make through the Automatic Contributions block.

Propinas

In the previous blocks we could allocate an amount to creators, in another block we could indicate of everything we give to whom we give more and to whom we give less and in the tip block we can donate the amount we want directly to the creator. We can control it in this block and the creator will receive that amount of BAT's every month if we have that amount, if we do not have it, the donation is not made.

But curiously, this function is not configured from this block but from the BAT icon that we have in the address bar. In this block we only have global information about the tips that we have given. We can also configure the type of creator we want to see, thus, in addition to a registered website, we can make the tip icon appear on Twitter, Github and Reddit.

We choose the creator we want to donate and by pressing the BAT icon the following window appears:

We choose the tip, we click on the "Send Tip" button and the creator will receive the BAT's at the end of the month in his account.

Some confusing points about Brave Rewards

At this point, we can see that the operation is simple, but sometimes there are things that can confuse us.

One of those things, I was a victim of it too, is the confusion of the traditional ad system with Brave Rewards ads.

One thing is the ad blocker, which works like Adblock or DuckDuckGo Private Essentials and another thing is Brave Rewards, the use of one does not mean the activation or suspension of the other. That is, if I use the ad blocker I can use Brave Rewards because it uses a different way of serving ads and if we want to use Brave Rewards it does not mean that we have to put up with the ads and cookies of certain web pages and have to turn off the ad blocker and trackers. They are different things that should be indicated.

BATs are ethereum tokens that have a relative valueThat is, we may now buy BAT's for $ 1 and donate 5 BAT's believing that we give $ 5, but at the end of the month, that may be worth half or triple. In the case of changing the price, we will only be charged at the time we make the purchase, but the creator will receive the BAT's but when they change that to real money, they will only charge the value of those BAT's at that time. It may be obvious what I have said, but there are many content creators who still do not know how crypto works and who sign up because they have more sources of income, but not knowing the system and what the use of cryptocurrencies implies.

Lastly, there is the point of wallets and Uphold. The BAT's are only transferred by UpHold and from there to the wallet that we want. But Brave has a section called "Crypto Wallets" is a wallet management section that Brave has incorporated so that we can manage our wallets through the web browser, like the digital certificate function, but it is not related to BAT's unless we link one wallet with the other. It is important because if we want we cannot use the Crypto Wallet section and if the Brave Rewards.

Opinion after more than a month of use

Tired of Chrome and Edge background processes, Firefox heaviness, and Chromium issues, I decided to go for Brave and I really like it. Not only for compatibility and use but also for things like Brave Rewards. It seems to me a very interesting and novel advertising system. But a system that is very poorly explained by the creators of Brave.

In a world where crowdfunding and crowdfunding are becoming a great option to financially support content creators, tools such as Brave and its Brave Rewards are a great incentive and a way to pay for content with our money or with our data, but knowing us the risk and what all this entails.

I will continue using this browser because I like its philosophy and how it works. And you, will you be brave and try it? What do you think about this use of the blockchain? Do you already have a BAT?