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‘Bitcoin Browser’ Brave Raises $4.5M, Readies for 1.0 Launch

158 points by 3eto 10y ago

seibelj 10y ago
> 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.
- dieselz 10y ago
  > But I seriously doubt you will get people to voluntarily pay money I've always been curious about this. I'd definitely pay $25/mo if it was distributed amongst the websites I visit. Bonus points if it would distribute it more heavily to the smaller sites than the bigger ones.
  - jerf 10y ago
    By the time you're done manifesting that concretely, you've nearly got Patreon. Yes, it's not quite identical, but, for instance, once you accept that the site still has to opt-in it ceases to be magic.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Or Flattr.
      - nailer 10y ago
        Or window.payment which Chrome and Safari are already implementing (using Apple Pay and Google Wallet respectively).
  - rhino369 10y ago
    If this was required to view sites, I'd definitely pay it. But I also wouldn't go out of my way to do it. I'm sure the right business could pull it off, but I don't think it's going to be voluntary donations.
- mdrzn 10y ago
  Also, "Brave provides a 40% to 60% speed increase" compared to WHAT? They may even be comparing it with Internet Explorer 6 for all we know.
  - sp332 10y ago
    Compared to the same browser with tracking enabled. https://brave.com/#faster https://brave.com/#faster
- Mahn 10y ago
  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.
  - dman 10y ago
    Disabling javascript takes it one step further.
    - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
      Which breaks HTTP DELETE since HTML5 doesn't have support for it..
      - PeCaN 10y ago
        How so? <form method="post" action="..."> <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="DELETE"/> </form> has been the standard workaround since like… 2005, if not earlier, and works quite fine without JavaScript (assuming your server-side supports it, and most or all common frameworks do).
        forgotpwtomain 10y ago
        That's a workaround only if the server forges the value of '_method' into method via. Middleware
        PeCaN 10y ago
        > assuming your server-side supports it, and most or all common frameworks do
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        Seriously, who cares? POST /deleteThing. Done.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  I think we need to think two steps ahead here. Say everyone starts using ad blockers and disables flash. Then what? Websites still need to make money. In this case Brave is betting that websites will want to ask for money from their users, but that each website maintaining their own subscription service is not viable. Maybe large websites like WSJ can get people to subscribe, but most probably cannot. Do you want to be subscribed to every website you ever read a single article on? I think Brave in this case is positioning themselves to be the middle man. They want to become an essential layer that sits on top of the ISP. If their vision of the future turns out to be accurate, being the first mover here will be very profitable.
  - nugget 10y ago
    You can't reliably adblock vertically integrated sites like Facebook and Google search who sell and serve their own ads on their own domains. There's a scenario wherein monetization as we know it dies for the majority of long-tail sites and content creators migrate en mass to the large platforms in order to survive. Not a great scenario to think about if you love the decentralized nature of the early web but a plausible scenario nonetheless. There a few startups out there trying to "defeat" adblock by allowing smaller sites to mimic the vertically integrated nature of the largest platforms, and counterintuitively the web might be much better off in the long run if they succeed.
    - anexprogrammer 10y ago
      Really? ublock and even adblock seem to cope quite well with both. I haven't unintentionlly seen a Google search ad in a decade, or any Youtube ads. In the case of FB they block 95%+ - periodically a few ads seem to slip through for a day or two at most. So what do you call reliable?
      - Snesker 10y ago
        >I haven't unintentionlly seen a Google search ad in a decade the ads are the particular search results you saw
  - 10y ago
anc84 10y ago
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 10y ago
  You should read their literature on this, it's some kind of zero knowledge thing.
recursive 10y ago
Last time I looked at Brave, it was replacing some served ads with its own ads. I do not think that's ok.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  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.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    It's not their site, and it's not their content. It is not ok, not in the least.
    - sp332 10y ago
      It's the not the site owner's browser, so it's fine.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - bduerst 10y ago
        >so it's fine. Not according to copyright law. Just because you have a computer (with a browser) doesn't give you the right to do what you want with someone else's content.
        curioussavage 10y ago
        A law does not establish if something is really immoral. And until people with dollar signs in their eyes don't have all the sway in making those calls I reserve the right to resist. Once you send information out into the world. you DONT own it. Real ownership is the ability to exert control over something. Divulged information cannot be controlled by the original source.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
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.
gadders 10y ago
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.
vectorpush 10y ago
Internet users with browsers full of bitcoin... what could possibly go wrong?
- easuter 10y ago
  If the browser becomes popular, expect an explosion of "sorry for your loss" incidents. Honestly I don't know why people keep throwing money (fiat, lol) at bitcoin projects.
- curioussavage 10y ago
  Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really. Is it the end of the world if I lose 50 cents worth of bitcoin? oooh scary.
  - vectorpush 10y ago
    > Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really Until it isn't. Good luck displacing ads with average wallet balances of "50 cents"
    - curioussavage 10y ago
      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
therealmarv 10y ago
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.
seren 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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
compil3r 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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..
lumberjack 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Brave shares the revenue from their client-side ads with the content sites.
pascalxus 10y ago
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.
paulsutter 10y ago
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.
finnh 10y ago
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.
mikeokner 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
anonbanker 10y ago
isn't this just Net Neutrality through the backdoor?
- 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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?
tummybug 10y ago
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.
gamuni 10y ago
I've been using this for almost six months now and I like it.
mrfusion 10y ago
Won't this run afoul of money transmitter laws?
flukus 10y ago
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.
Kinnard 10y ago
I wonder how this will play with zeronet: http://zeronet.io http://zeronet.io

158 points by 3eto 10y ago

> 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.

dieselz 10y ago
> But I seriously doubt you will get people to voluntarily pay money I've always been curious about this. I'd definitely pay $25/mo if it was distributed amongst the websites I visit. Bonus points if it would distribute it more heavily to the smaller sites than the bigger ones.
- jerf 10y ago
  By the time you're done manifesting that concretely, you've nearly got Patreon. Yes, it's not quite identical, but, for instance, once you accept that the site still has to opt-in it ceases to be magic.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Or Flattr.
    - nailer 10y ago
      Or window.payment which Chrome and Safari are already implementing (using Apple Pay and Google Wallet respectively).
- rhino369 10y ago
  If this was required to view sites, I'd definitely pay it. But I also wouldn't go out of my way to do it. I'm sure the right business could pull it off, but I don't think it's going to be voluntary donations.
mdrzn 10y ago
Also, "Brave provides a 40% to 60% speed increase" compared to WHAT? They may even be comparing it with Internet Explorer 6 for all we know.
- sp332 10y ago
  Compared to the same browser with tracking enabled. https://brave.com/#faster https://brave.com/#faster
Mahn 10y ago
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.
- dman 10y ago
  Disabling javascript takes it one step further.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    Which breaks HTTP DELETE since HTML5 doesn't have support for it..
    - PeCaN 10y ago
      How so? <form method="post" action="..."> <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="DELETE"/> </form> has been the standard workaround since like… 2005, if not earlier, and works quite fine without JavaScript (assuming your server-side supports it, and most or all common frameworks do).
      - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
        That's a workaround only if the server forges the value of '_method' into method via. Middleware
        PeCaN 10y ago
        > assuming your server-side supports it, and most or all common frameworks do
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Seriously, who cares? POST /deleteThing. Done.
Paul-ish 10y ago
I think we need to think two steps ahead here. Say everyone starts using ad blockers and disables flash. Then what? Websites still need to make money. In this case Brave is betting that websites will want to ask for money from their users, but that each website maintaining their own subscription service is not viable. Maybe large websites like WSJ can get people to subscribe, but most probably cannot. Do you want to be subscribed to every website you ever read a single article on? I think Brave in this case is positioning themselves to be the middle man. They want to become an essential layer that sits on top of the ISP. If their vision of the future turns out to be accurate, being the first mover here will be very profitable.
- nugget 10y ago
  You can't reliably adblock vertically integrated sites like Facebook and Google search who sell and serve their own ads on their own domains. There's a scenario wherein monetization as we know it dies for the majority of long-tail sites and content creators migrate en mass to the large platforms in order to survive. Not a great scenario to think about if you love the decentralized nature of the early web but a plausible scenario nonetheless. There a few startups out there trying to "defeat" adblock by allowing smaller sites to mimic the vertically integrated nature of the largest platforms, and counterintuitively the web might be much better off in the long run if they succeed.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Really? ublock and even adblock seem to cope quite well with both. I haven't unintentionlly seen a Google search ad in a decade, or any Youtube ads. In the case of FB they block 95%+ - periodically a few ads seem to slip through for a day or two at most. So what do you call reliable?
    - Snesker 10y ago
      >I haven't unintentionlly seen a Google search ad in a decade the ads are the particular search results you saw
- 10y ago

anc84 10y ago

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 10y ago
You should read their literature on this, it's some kind of zero knowledge thing.

recursive 10y ago

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

Overtonwindow 10y ago
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.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  It's not their site, and it's not their content. It is not ok, not in the least.
  - sp332 10y ago
    It's the not the site owner's browser, so it's fine.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - bduerst 10y ago
      >so it's fine. Not according to copyright law. Just because you have a computer (with a browser) doesn't give you the right to do what you want with someone else's content.
      - curioussavage 10y ago
        A law does not establish if something is really immoral. And until people with dollar signs in their eyes don't have all the sway in making those calls I reserve the right to resist. Once you send information out into the world. you DONT own it. Real ownership is the ability to exert control over something. Divulged information cannot be controlled by the original source.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

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.

gadders 10y ago

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.

vectorpush 10y ago

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

easuter 10y ago
If the browser becomes popular, expect an explosion of "sorry for your loss" incidents. Honestly I don't know why people keep throwing money (fiat, lol) at bitcoin projects.
curioussavage 10y ago
Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really. Is it the end of the world if I lose 50 cents worth of bitcoin? oooh scary.
- vectorpush 10y ago
  > Miniscule amounts of bitcoin really Until it isn't. Good luck displacing ads with average wallet balances of "50 cents"
  - curioussavage 10y ago
    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

therealmarv 10y ago

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.

seren 10y ago

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 10y ago
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

compil3r 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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..

lumberjack 10y ago

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 10y ago
Brave shares the revenue from their client-side ads with the content sites.

pascalxus 10y ago

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.

paulsutter 10y ago

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.

finnh 10y ago

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.

mikeokner 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

anonbanker 10y ago

isn't this just Net Neutrality through the backdoor?

0x6c6f6c 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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?

tummybug 10y ago

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.

gamuni 10y ago

I've been using this for almost six months now and I like it.

mrfusion 10y ago

Won't this run afoul of money transmitter laws?

flukus 10y ago

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.

Kinnard 10y ago

I wonder how this will play with zeronet: http://zeronet.io http://zeronet.io