Brave and micropayments

The Brave browser is the shiny new thing to attract my attention. I am mostly intrigued by the business model and the long-term vision of this company and I encourage others to explore the service to encourage the developments to continue.

Brave offers an immediate benefit and an immediate limitation based on my experience. It is by far the fastest browser I have used and this seems to be because it blocks ads and cookies that take time to load. The speed difference is quite noticeable. I am not necessarily a fan of ad blocking as I will explain later, but the issue of revenue to content producers is part of the long-term vision of the company. On the negative side, many of the plugins/extensions I rely on are not presently available through this browser. Using plugins would not seem against the philosophy of the Brave developers, but other companies have yet to invest in the preparation of their services for this platform.

As I understand the long-term vision, the long-term plan looks like something this:

1. Create a fast browser with great security
2. Allow users to substitute Brave ads for existing ads and offer micropayments to users for viewing these ads.
3. Encourage users to set up a monthly fund that would compensate content creators. 

I was surprised that when I downloaded Brave to my desktop machine that I had an older version of this product already on my Mac. I remember investigating some of the ideas some time ago. The business model of Brave is not difficult to understand – it will take a cut of the revenue from those who purchase ads served by Brave and from the micropayment system intended to compensate content creators. 

I am interested in the micropayment as an alternative to ad model. I am a content creator, but on a very small scale and my interest in such systems is mostly to explore how they actually work. There are ads on my blogs and other content and I have a sense of what content creators are actually paid from the ad model. I am not against ads, but I do share the concern that the collection of personal information is a by-product of targeted ads and some of the goals of ad targeting go beyond selling you goods.

The problem with making and receiving micropayments in the Brave system is the reliance on cryptocurrency and getting funds into and out of this system. I think I have the multiple steps figured out, but I doubt many consumers would make the effort. This will be a significant barrier for generating user support and getting the model off the ground. Why cryptocurreny rather than a credit card or PayPal? As I understand the system, I can commit as little as two dollars and a few cents a month to the distribution fund, but I must transfer a minimum of $50 into the system to be converted into cryptocurrency. This would allow me to contribute to the system for more than a year, but the minimum is large enough to delay my commitment to explore a little more. BTW – the minimum is not set by Brave, but by the service offering a way to convert funds.

My wife’s reaction to my interest in the Brave model was something like “you expect anyone to pay for your travel posts“? We just returned from a trip and I keep a travel blog. No, I don’t, but I am an idealist and I hope long-term a system other than ad revenue is developed for compensating those who develop quality content. Brave does not require that any money you contribute be shared with the producers of all content you consume. You designate the sources across which your contribution is shared.