It is the first step in a grandiose plan to completely reformulate the funding architecture of the Web and perhaps even save online publishers. The transparency of the Bitcoin blockchain further means that anyone can audit the flow of funds to keep Brave accountable.īecause of the programmability of Bitcoin, it is also possible that Brave could use it in the future to design a fully decentralized version of the browser in which escrow accounts automatically verify websites and disburse funds, rather than relying on Brave to manually intervene.īy adding payments to the Brave browser, Eich is not just giving people a way to donate to their favorite websites in return for the revenue they’ve lost to ad blocking technology. ![]() Each user has effective custody of their Brave user wallet’s funds for the purpose of microdonating to their top publishers,” says Eich. “We use this feature to avoid custody of funds. The Brave Payment system also leverages a feature of Bitcoin called multi-signature transactions to ensure that Brave cannot misuse the funds in browser wallets. It’s better that we can’t have it than that we could have it and promise to be good,” says Eich. Anonize hides the correlation between browsing history and the payments that are received.Įich sees Brave as the first step in a grandiose plan to completely reformulate the funding architecture of the Web and perhaps even save online publishers. However, Brave uses a cryptographic protocol called Anonize (which puts to work zero-knowledge proofs similar to the ones that shield transactions in the digital currency Zcash). Normally, sending transactions across the bitcoin network to escrow accounts for known websites would give away information about who is visiting which websites, because every transaction is recorded in a public ledger. According to Eich, the user’s Brave client is the only place where browsing history gets stored. Eich says you can expect, in the coming months, to be able to pay with Stripe as well.Īlthough Bitcoin is invisible in the user experience, it is essential to the privacy of the system. The payment actually goes to Coinbase, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the U.S. But when the money lands in your wallet, it is denominated in Dollars. To that end, people have the option of funding their wallets with a credit or debit card. “We try not to put Bitcoin all up in your face,” says Eich. In order to attract people who don’t already own bitcoins, or who may not even know what Bitcoin is, Eich and the Brave designers have made the digital currency as invisible as possible in the Brave Payments experience. In return for providing this service, Brave takes five percent of all the donations that come through. Then, after a month goes by (measured by the days you actually spend using the Brave browser), bitcoin transactions signed by both you and BitGo trigger the disbursement of that money into a Brave settlement wallet.īefore a website operator can collect the funds, it must go through a verification process with Brave to prove that it’s running a legitimate business. After loading bitcoins into this wallet, you specify the total amount of money you would like to spend on your Web browsing. When you create a wallet with Brave, you actually share it with a company called BitGo, meaning that you and BitGo each own one key for the wallet, both of which need to be present in order for a payment to go through. ![]() For now, Brave plays a central role in facilitating the transactions, although it has sought to do so in a way that protects the privacy of Brave users. He views it as a replacement the one Brave takes away, which he argues is dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse.Īs of September, people using Brave have the option of creating a wallet in the browser, loading it with bitcoins, and sending small payments to publishers based on the anonymized metering of their Web traffic. Now Eich is rolling out a new Bitcoin payment platform, integrated right into the browser, that he hopes will provide an alternative revenue stream for publishers. Last year, Brendan Eich, former CEO of the Mozilla corporation and designer the Javascript programming language, launched Brave, a Web browser that blocks advertisements by default.
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