
‘Bitcoin Browser’ Brave Raises $4.5M, Readies for 1.0 Launch - 3eto
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-browser-brave-raises-4-5m/
======
seibelj
> _On the desktop, Brave provides a 40% to 60% speed increase, and a 2x to 4x
> speed increase on mobile devices. Mobile users see a direct reduction in
> both battery and data plan consumption. Brave also protects users with
> privacy and security features such as HTTPS Everywhere to encrypt data
> traffic, fingerprinting shields, phishing protection, malware filtering, and
> script blocking._

Maybe this is a good enough argument to get people to install it. But I
seriously doubt you will get people to voluntarily pay money, which is slowly
paid out as they surf the web, when the alternative is a free browsing
experience with a standard ad blocker.

Also, all of their listed benefits to users is accessible on all other major
browsers now with existing extensions.

~~~
Mahn
It doesn't make much sense to be honest. I've heard about this browser a few
times now and I still have no idea how is it supposed to gain traction. The
performance/bandwidth benefits of less shitty ads can be had by simply
disabling flash and using an ad blocker, and otherwise average people just
aren't going to care to switch. As far as I can tell the only reason investors
threw $7M at them is because Brendan Eich is involved.

~~~
sp332
I want to support the sites I visit but I really dislike ads. I subscribe to a
few but it would be a pain to set up individually for every site. Other people
are also worried about being tracked online. This lets you conveniently
support sites as you browse, without being tracked.

~~~
icebraining
I wonder how can they pay the site you visit without tracking your visits to
those sites.

EDIT: apparently they use Anonize, that's interesting.

[https://anonize.org/assets/technology.html](https://anonize.org/assets/technology.html)

~~~
sp332
[https://github.com/brave/ledger/blob/master/documentation/Le...](https://github.com/brave/ledger/blob/master/documentation/Ledger-
Principles.md)

------
finnh
I want micropayments for web content to happen. I much prefer that future to
the advertising-supported present.

Getting there has a massive chicken-and-egg problem, of course, as you need a
viable mass of both users and sites for it to get traction, and you can't get
one without the other.

Requiring a new browser (vs. an extension to a normal browser) takes your
"viable mass of users" problem and makes it about ten times harder.

You are brave, Brave.

------
recursive
Last time I looked at Brave, it was replacing some served ads with its own
ads. I do not think that's ok.

~~~
Overtonwindow
I think that's very much ok. At least someone is paying attention to the ads,
and curating them so they're not the same awful ads we've been getting. If the
current browsers cared anything about our viewing experience we would never
get kicked into the app store, or bombarded by some autoplay video, but we do
and it's not stopping. Bring on Brave.

~~~
DaemonHN
In my opinion, replacing ads is worse than simply ad-blocking.

Imagine a scenario where a replaced ad actually degraded the website's
performance more so than the website's own ads, which is not all that far-
fetched, and users end up blaming the website for having crappy ads.

Additionally, what if Google and Mozilla started doing that with their
browsers, would you still be okay with it?

------
paulsutter
What transparency do they provide about how the payments are allocated? Can I
see where the money went and which publishers actually collected their
payment? Or is that all opaque, where Brave actually keeps "a portion" plus
publishers don't actually get paid unless their payment is above some rarely
reached threshold?

Personally I'd love to pay for using websites and get a faster experience
(versus the alternative ways to do it), because I really want publishers to
get paid. But I'm skeptical until I see that it's really happening. No
transparency means 0% chance I use it.

------
Overtonwindow
I love Brave. I'm still locked into Chrome out of habit but I'm slowly trying
to push myself over to Brave. It does a much, much better job ad blocking
natively, and it's getting better with every release. The primary reason,
however, is I like the idea of controlling how ad revenue is used. I think the
idea of paying people to accept ads is a long overdue.

------
tummybug
I just downloaded this and went to test it out. I went straight to a torrent
site to see how it worked. The was a noticeable difference in how fast the
page loaded but the pop under on the site still managed to open a tab with
some shady advertising. I imagine they are still working out the kinks but
when they are as effective as blocking ads as an ad-blocker and maintains its
speed this will be a great browser.

------
seren
Shouldn't a browser working the other way round should be implemented : you
can not use any adblocker but in exchange of your eyeballs usage you get a
small percentage of the ads costs ?

~~~
uryga
I don't think you (the viewer) could earn anything meaningful in that system.
Afaik adsense gives the website owner profits on the order of ~0.01 cent / ad
view. So "a small percentage" of that would give the viewer basically nothing.

also "eyeball usage" sounds about as dystopian as "human resources" :D

------
gadders
I like Brave on Android from when it was just a "bubble browser", but man
alive it's flakey. Every day I get random bubbles on the screen that can't be
moved or closed, or even worse, invisible full page coverage which means
nothing on the screen works unless I pull down the Brave notification in the
system tray to manually hide it.

2-3 times a day I have to force-close it.

------
therealmarv
Please fix this "jumpiness" on your bubble browser on Android. Every time I
check Brave on Android I get angry because of this bubble hiding/showing the
whole time. Especially on websites which hide their top nav bar themself...
then I have two hiding mechanism jumping all over my screen. When I visit a
website I want to read it without jumping text.

------
mikeokner
It's laughable that Brave is marketed as a new, fast browser when it's just a
Node/Electron application. It's barely more than a skin on a Chrome window
with no possibility of ever outperforming Chrome.

~~~
StrykerKKD
I was laughing out loud, when I saw that it was based on node. They want to
build a secure and fast browser and they use JS to accomplish it.

------
pascalxus
Does anyone here think this might be one of those historical moments like when
the Mosaic browser was released?

I see some potential for what could be. But, I don't see the value proposition
for the average consumer. I just don't think there's enough value in what
they're offering, to be a major breakthrough that will revolutionize the
internet. I see it as more of a niche offering.

------
lumberjack
The only people I know who care about ads and have them enabled do so because
they feel they must reward the content creators.

If you are replacing the content creator ads with your own, there is
absolutely no reason to have ads enabled at all.

~~~
cpeterso
Brave shares the revenue from their client-side ads with the content sites.

------
anc84
So with that Brave, BitGo and Coinbase get to know it all? Or do I have a new
pseudonym per site? How does this prevent all my transactions being known to
the parties involved or even the whole world?

~~~
woah
You should read their literature on this, it's some kind of zero knowledge
thing.

------
flukus
I like the idea behind the brave browser but there UI needs some work. There
are no extensions yet to make tabs behave more like chromes on the desktop. On
android (where I really neeed more ad blocker options) they have this weird
bubble thing like facebook chat.

I find it unusable until they do something about this.

------
compil3r
I installed Brave when it first came out as the ad plan sounded very
interesting. There was another attempt using bitcoin in the browser to
'bypass' ads, but unfortunately, it wasn't have been successful (in the
network effect sense) I'm still waiting for the LastPass option :)

~~~
hundchenkatze
Lastpass is available in the latest version I have (0.11.1). However, it
doesn't get a menu icon anywhere in the title bar. You have to use the right-
click contextual menu to use it if autofill fails.

~~~
compil3r
didn't know they updated it, i'll give it a go later tonight. thanks! any
bitcoin related updates? their seed money is all from bitcoin VCs so there
must be something going on..

------
vectorpush
Internet users with browsers full of bitcoin... what could possibly go wrong?

~~~
curioussavage
Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really. Is it the end of the world if I lose 50
cents worth of bitcoin?

oooh scary.

~~~
vectorpush
> _Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really_

Until it isn't. Good luck displacing ads with average wallet balances of "50
cents"

~~~
curioussavage
The replaced ads are bought through brave so users don't pay for that. I
believe that is the default (would have to check to be sure) Either way most
users probably won't really have any balance at all

------
Kinnard
I wonder how this will play with zeronet:
[http://zeronet.io](http://zeronet.io)

------
mrfusion
Won't this run afoul of money transmitter laws?

------
anonbanker
isn't this just Net Neutrality through the backdoor?

~~~
0x6c6f6c
I fail to see how ad blocking on the client side relates to prioritized
network traffic.

ISPs are the only ones with control over the system to really hijack net
neutrality anyway. Using a browser that blocks/replaces sources by your choice
has nothing to do with that.

~~~
anonbanker
we'll let's help you with your issue: should content providers (reddit,
arstechnica, etc) decide to de-prioritize those that aren't directly making
them money, the effect is the same as net neutrality, (a tiered-access
internet) is it not? Should Brave gain even a minority marketshare, you'll
definitely see Google and Mozilla (and likely Microsoft) jump on board with
similar solutions.

We've merely pushed the control from the ISP to the content providers. Does
this mean it isn't a Net Neutrality hijack anymore?

