Brave Browser Will Pay Users Bitcoin To View Its Ads
- by Felicia Greiff , April 6, 2016
Brave, a browser from Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich that claims to block "all the greed and ugliness
on the Web that slows you down and invades your privacy," has a new proposition: paying users in bitcoin to view its ads.The browser, available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, offers an "ad replacement" mode, which replaces third-party ads with ads from its own network that don't involve tracking and are "anonymous and private."
When the browser was announced in January, Eich told Real-Time Daily that revenue will not only be shared with publishers, but a "small slice" will go to users who in turn can give that money back to publishers they like.
So here's how it will work, according to a blog post from Eich and Brave senior software engineer Marshall Rose: in "ad-replacement" mode, the total views from the ad-replacement users are aggregated into a weighted list for publishers, the blog said. Once an ad partner pays up, revenue is divided up, with publishers getting 55%; Brave getting 15%; its ad-matching partner getting 15%; and the user getting 15%.
The user's share is deposited in a bitcoin wallet, which has to be verified with a phone number and email address. If they choose to, users can donate to publishers using the "Brave Ledger," a bitcoin-based micropayments system. (See the image on the left for what a user's ledger looks like.)
