Brave supports manifest V2 because the Chromium upstream hasn't removed it for enterprise use yet. As soon as that changes, Brave does not have a plan to continue maintaining V2. What you call Google payola is really the independence that allows Mozilla to develop a browser engine that isn't being actively crippled by Google's initiatives. That's the important piece. Brave is not a sustainable play because they have no way to fund a forked version of the chromium browser engine when Google inevitably cripples it to invade our privacy even further.
Safari's extensions had a similar change-over to a ManifestV3-like system, with the same arguments: increases performance (very important for mobile) and puts more safeguards on extensions doing funky privacy-hostile stuff.
Yes, ManifestV3 nerfs adblocking, and Google loves that side effect. It will hamper Brave' internal adblocking engine.
I think the big interesting question is: if Brave figures out how to add improvements to ManifestV3 that aid adblocking without sacrificing performance or privacy/security, will Google accept the PRs?
