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We signed up for Brave's setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful i

We signed up for Brave's setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer. And we can't even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider and they aren't licensed in New York. The process was also pretty buggy and the magic link email login was clunky/kinda broken. https://portableapps.com/node/60580 https://portableapps.com/node/60580

jonathansampson 7y ago
Uphold is working hard to acquire the bitlicense for New York. They shared on Twitter earlier this month that they hope to have this resolved soon. It's worth noting that Creators also have a referral program whereby $5 in BAT can be earned for each user brought to the Brave platform. brave.com/refer Thank you for your incredible patience and participation. We hope to see positive developments on the bitlicense front soon. Please do let us know if there is ever anything we can do for you in the interim.
- xur17 7y ago
  Are there any plans to get rid of uphold on the publisher side and allow external wallets? It was a huge turn off to me when I signed up.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    We need a regulated entity to do directed (tips, recurring), user-anonymous, off-chain transactions, and to comply with OFAC and other hard regulations. We can't do it ourselves. Wallet is the least of the issue, even if the publisher were willing to take BAT. Our future phase (Apollo) blockchain work will move more txns on-chain but not solve all regulatory problems. No blockchain can do that unless you are using p2p directly, and then on the current big chains you don't have anonymity or low fees. This may change, we're working on it.
    - prop84u 7y ago
      Please do not require people to submit their government ID in order to withdraw their tokens, after you inserted yourself in the donation flow of creators by offering to accept donations on their part from a priviledged UI. We use platforms which do not ask for our ID, and we would prefer if you would not reduce the probability of Brave users donating to us because they think those BAT tokens will reach us. Yes, unverified creators are marked as such, but a donation call in the browser UI is a powerful default, more so than the donation service preferred by the creator, which can only be shown as a web page.
      - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        > Please do not require people to submit their goverment ID in order to withdraw their tokens Not verifying ID almost certainly causes a violation of American, British and European anti-money laundering code. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
        prop84u 7y ago
        So blockchain.com is breaking the law by not asking all their customers to upload their government ID and a selfie in order to withdraw the crypto they have received to a private wallet?
        donaltroddyn 7y ago
        Blockchain.com's privacy policy states that, for anti-money laundering purposes, they'll collect: > Passport and/or national driver’s license or government-issued identification card to verify your identity (from https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy). That's consistent with every other exchange I've used.
        prop84u 7y ago
        Verification is only required to use their exchange, and not for withdrawing to a crypto wallet. Brave would be able to offer BAT withdrawals for creators in a legally sound way. https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018359871-What-Blockchain-products-require-identity-verification- https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/36001835987...
- JohnTHaller 7y ago
  Thanks for the details jonathan, but the referral program is a bad fit for PortableApps.com. Brave isn't interested in our standardized portable software format (download, install, auto-update, and manage hundreds of real apps in one system using an open format and open source tools). And the browser's 'portable mode' itself isn't actually portable. In fairness, though, all Chrome-ish browsers are broken portably.
qzw 7y ago
Thanks for sharing your real world experience. For the sake of clarity, is that a million monthly figure for your entire site or for just Brave users? If the former, would you be willing to share the number or percentage of Brave users?
- JohnTHaller 7y ago
  All users. We don't track brave users as they block Google analytics. The users who requested we participate thought it would be a good way to get 'free money' from Brave users like them that we were leaving on the table. That's definitely not the case.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Free money isn't free money? Sure it's only a few bucks a month but look at that in terms of your user base. What are you going to assume your marketshare of Brave users is? For context consider the marketshare of Firefox is in the single digits. Brave is probably a fraction of that. If we assume Brave's popularity is 10% of that of Firefox, that'd give you an expected userbase of < 1% Brave users. That'd be $3/month for, at most, 10k users. If your entire userbase was on brave that'd be $300/month for doing literally nothing. It's really quite a nice model. Actually this also understates the profit per person for another reason. In Brave you have to opt in to the site rewards system. So you're likely not only seeing a fraction of your userbase paying you but a fraction of your Brave users.
    - JohnTHaller 7y ago
      If our entire userbase switched to Brave and we made $300 a month from them, I'd have to shut the site down. Either way, it's really not worth the time and effort to set it up right now unless you're a huge site like wikipedia and you don't have any ad revenue to lose. I do think it will be interesting what this does to donations to wikipedia. It would make sense, I think, that Brave users may donate less per user overall as they feel they are contributing by using Brave.
      - 7y ago
noxer 7y ago
Any chance you'll do this with Coil.com next? Setup should be way way simpler and access the donations should be possible without any crypto at all.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  We don't require the publisher to take crypto either. Why did you think we did? Coil's Chrome extension is not doing well, I suspect in part because of Coil's absolutely terrible privacy policy.
Ajedi32 7y ago
> 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users To clarify, do you mean a million monthly Brave users? Or just a million monthly users in general? 10 cents a day might actually be a lot if you were only getting one or two Brave users a month.
- JohnTHaller 7y ago
  Users in general. We can't track Brave users because it blocks Google Analytics.
  - devmunchies 7y ago
    sure you can. easily done with basic server side tracking by parsing the User-Agent header. you should be logging this any way in some kind of access log.
    - fastest963 7y ago
      Their User-Agent is indistinguishable from Chrome, on purpose so I don't think you can just rely on that
      - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        Well, if it's Chrome and is untrackable, then it's Brave, easy.
        mosselman 7y ago
        That is not how that works. What about actual Chrome with ad blockers then? What about other browsers pretending to be Chrome? There are add-ons that allow you to randomise your user agent, etc, etc.
        GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        Does Chrome consult with ad blockers when it reports user activity to google?
caiocaiocaio 7y ago
Do you hate gays?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  What?
  - caiocaiocaio 7y ago
    Brave was started after Eich was pressured out of the Mozilla foundation for financially supporting anti-gay initiatives. He called his company 'Brave' because he felt he was being brave for using his money to attack a minority group.
    - oxguy3 7y ago
      Had to look it up, it looks like he put $1000 towards California's Proposition 8 (to un-legalize same-sex marriage). In March 2014, he was named as Mozilla's new CEO, but resigned 9 days later under fire. https://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo-aims-to-go-where-tech-titans-wont/ https://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ce... Can't find anything on the origin of the company name, I assume that's just hyperbole.
      - BrendanEich 7y ago
        s/hyperbole/projection, also a lie/. Brave is named for its users, who have to stand up to the surveillance status quo, sometimes at a price in lowing their shields or otherwise tangling with anti-ad-blockers.
RenRav 7y ago
I've been using Brave for almost a year and haven't been shown a single ad, I think it's only been a few months since the ads were enabled though. I wonder if the same happens for others.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Just to be clear you opted in to the program? Top right menu icon -> Brave Rewards. By default no ads are shown.
  - RenRav 7y ago
    Right, as soon as ads became enabled on mobile I made sure to opt in.
short 7y ago
It might interest you that Kraken recently started listing Brave's BAT as well: https://blog.kraken.com/post/2664/bat-and-waves-trading-starts-august-22/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/2664/bat-and-waves-trading-star...
JohnTHaller 7y ago
To clarify a couple things since I never expected this to be a top comment... the visitor numbers were overall, we don't know how many monthly Brave users we have by design (Brave blocks Google Analytics and uses a Chrome user-agent). I could possibly come up with a way to specifically identify them anyway, but that kinda goes against what said user is trying to achieve by using Brave, so I don't want to do that. I do roughly calculate page loads that block Google Analytics server-side (anonymized) so we have a better idea of overall visitor numbers than GA alone provides. Brave fixed a few of the complaints I had in the last few months with logins, header editing, and verifying with Uphold, so I've updated my linked forum post to reflect that. I think it will be interesting to see how Brave's concept/tech will continue to evolve as it matures and has some traction.

jonathansampson 7y ago

Uphold is working hard to acquire the bitlicense for New York. They shared on Twitter earlier this month that they hope to have this resolved soon. It's worth noting that Creators also have a referral program whereby $5 in BAT can be earned for each user brought to the Brave platform. brave.com/refer Thank you for your incredible patience and participation. We hope to see positive developments on the bitlicense front soon. Please do let us know if there is ever anything we can do for you in the interim.

xur17 7y ago
Are there any plans to get rid of uphold on the publisher side and allow external wallets? It was a huge turn off to me when I signed up.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  We need a regulated entity to do directed (tips, recurring), user-anonymous, off-chain transactions, and to comply with OFAC and other hard regulations. We can't do it ourselves. Wallet is the least of the issue, even if the publisher were willing to take BAT. Our future phase (Apollo) blockchain work will move more txns on-chain but not solve all regulatory problems. No blockchain can do that unless you are using p2p directly, and then on the current big chains you don't have anonymity or low fees. This may change, we're working on it.
  - prop84u 7y ago
    Please do not require people to submit their government ID in order to withdraw their tokens, after you inserted yourself in the donation flow of creators by offering to accept donations on their part from a priviledged UI. We use platforms which do not ask for our ID, and we would prefer if you would not reduce the probability of Brave users donating to us because they think those BAT tokens will reach us. Yes, unverified creators are marked as such, but a donation call in the browser UI is a powerful default, more so than the donation service preferred by the creator, which can only be shown as a web page.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > Please do not require people to submit their goverment ID in order to withdraw their tokens Not verifying ID almost certainly causes a violation of American, British and European anti-money laundering code. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
      - prop84u 7y ago
        So blockchain.com is breaking the law by not asking all their customers to upload their government ID and a selfie in order to withdraw the crypto they have received to a private wallet?
        donaltroddyn 7y ago
        Blockchain.com's privacy policy states that, for anti-money laundering purposes, they'll collect: > Passport and/or national driver’s license or government-issued identification card to verify your identity (from https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy). That's consistent with every other exchange I've used.
        prop84u 7y ago
        Verification is only required to use their exchange, and not for withdrawing to a crypto wallet. Brave would be able to offer BAT withdrawals for creators in a legally sound way. https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018359871-What-Blockchain-products-require-identity-verification- https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/36001835987...
JohnTHaller 7y ago
Thanks for the details jonathan, but the referral program is a bad fit for PortableApps.com. Brave isn't interested in our standardized portable software format (download, install, auto-update, and manage hundreds of real apps in one system using an open format and open source tools). And the browser's 'portable mode' itself isn't actually portable. In fairness, though, all Chrome-ish browsers are broken portably.

qzw 7y ago

Thanks for sharing your real world experience. For the sake of clarity, is that a million monthly figure for your entire site or for just Brave users? If the former, would you be willing to share the number or percentage of Brave users?

JohnTHaller 7y ago
All users. We don't track brave users as they block Google analytics. The users who requested we participate thought it would be a good way to get 'free money' from Brave users like them that we were leaving on the table. That's definitely not the case.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Free money isn't free money? Sure it's only a few bucks a month but look at that in terms of your user base. What are you going to assume your marketshare of Brave users is? For context consider the marketshare of Firefox is in the single digits. Brave is probably a fraction of that. If we assume Brave's popularity is 10% of that of Firefox, that'd give you an expected userbase of < 1% Brave users. That'd be $3/month for, at most, 10k users. If your entire userbase was on brave that'd be $300/month for doing literally nothing. It's really quite a nice model. Actually this also understates the profit per person for another reason. In Brave you have to opt in to the site rewards system. So you're likely not only seeing a fraction of your userbase paying you but a fraction of your Brave users.
  - JohnTHaller 7y ago
    If our entire userbase switched to Brave and we made $300 a month from them, I'd have to shut the site down. Either way, it's really not worth the time and effort to set it up right now unless you're a huge site like wikipedia and you don't have any ad revenue to lose. I do think it will be interesting what this does to donations to wikipedia. It would make sense, I think, that Brave users may donate less per user overall as they feel they are contributing by using Brave.
    - 7y ago

noxer 7y ago

Any chance you'll do this with Coil.com next? Setup should be way way simpler and access the donations should be possible without any crypto at all.

BrendanEich 7y ago
We don't require the publisher to take crypto either. Why did you think we did? Coil's Chrome extension is not doing well, I suspect in part because of Coil's absolutely terrible privacy policy.

Ajedi32 7y ago

> 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users To clarify, do you mean a million monthly Brave users? Or just a million monthly users in general? 10 cents a day might actually be a lot if you were only getting one or two Brave users a month.

JohnTHaller 7y ago
Users in general. We can't track Brave users because it blocks Google Analytics.
- devmunchies 7y ago
  sure you can. easily done with basic server side tracking by parsing the User-Agent header. you should be logging this any way in some kind of access log.
  - fastest963 7y ago
    Their User-Agent is indistinguishable from Chrome, on purpose so I don't think you can just rely on that
    - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
      Well, if it's Chrome and is untrackable, then it's Brave, easy.
      - mosselman 7y ago
        That is not how that works. What about actual Chrome with ad blockers then? What about other browsers pretending to be Chrome? There are add-ons that allow you to randomise your user agent, etc, etc.
        GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        Does Chrome consult with ad blockers when it reports user activity to google?

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

Do you hate gays?

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
What?
- caiocaiocaio 7y ago
  Brave was started after Eich was pressured out of the Mozilla foundation for financially supporting anti-gay initiatives. He called his company 'Brave' because he felt he was being brave for using his money to attack a minority group.
  - oxguy3 7y ago
    Had to look it up, it looks like he put $1000 towards California's Proposition 8 (to un-legalize same-sex marriage). In March 2014, he was named as Mozilla's new CEO, but resigned 9 days later under fire. https://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo-aims-to-go-where-tech-titans-wont/ https://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ce... Can't find anything on the origin of the company name, I assume that's just hyperbole.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      s/hyperbole/projection, also a lie/. Brave is named for its users, who have to stand up to the surveillance status quo, sometimes at a price in lowing their shields or otherwise tangling with anti-ad-blockers.

RenRav 7y ago

I've been using Brave for almost a year and haven't been shown a single ad, I think it's only been a few months since the ads were enabled though. I wonder if the same happens for others.

rjf72 7y ago
Just to be clear you opted in to the program? Top right menu icon -> Brave Rewards. By default no ads are shown.
- RenRav 7y ago
  Right, as soon as ads became enabled on mobile I made sure to opt in.

short 7y ago

It might interest you that Kraken recently started listing Brave's BAT as well: https://blog.kraken.com/post/2664/bat-and-waves-trading-starts-august-22/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/2664/bat-and-waves-trading-star...

JohnTHaller 7y ago

To clarify a couple things since I never expected this to be a top comment... the visitor numbers were overall, we don't know how many monthly Brave users we have by design (Brave blocks Google Analytics and uses a Chrome user-agent). I could possibly come up with a way to specifically identify them anyway, but that kinda goes against what said user is trying to achieve by using Brave, so I don't want to do that. I do roughly calculate page loads that block Google Analytics server-side (anonymized) so we have a better idea of overall visitor numbers than GA alone provides. Brave fixed a few of the complaints I had in the last few months with logins, header editing, and verifying with Uphold, so I've updated my linked forum post to reflect that. I think it will be interesting to see how Brave's concept/tech will continue to evolve as it matures and has some traction.