Brave Browser Following Continues to Grow as Rivals Begin Integrating AI

Brave Browser, the web browser with built-in ad-blocking and privacy features, continues to grow in popularity even as rivals begin to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their products.

AI has been becoming increasingly popular, with chatbots and virtual assistants such as ChatGPT becoming more and more commonplace. The Brave Browser community has also been calling for ChatGPT support on the platform.

Most recently, tech giant Microsoft announced a new version of its search engine Bing, which is powered by AI. The product is launched alongside new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser, promising a completely new experience for browsing the web and finding information online.

“It's a new day in search,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event while arguing that the paradigm for web search hasn't changed in decades and that AI can deliver information more quickly than traditional methods. “The race starts today, and we're going to move and move fast,” he said.

Powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing search engine is currently open for beta testing. However, people find Bing's AI-powered replies absurd and factually wrong.

The buzz around AI is understandable, as AI can offer many advantages over traditional methods of communication, including the ability to respond instantly to queries and to understand complex questions.

Although the risk of data breaches, censorship, and the possibility of the technology becoming outdated quickly can't be denied. Moreover, AI is often used to track user data and target ads. In contrast, Brave's developers have pledged never to collect or sell user data. This commitment to privacy has helped Brave attract a loyal following of users who value online privacy.

There's clearly a growing need for privacy in our increasingly connected world. After all, with so much of our lives being lived online, it's becoming more and more difficult to keep our personal information private.

From social media to online shopping, we're constantly sharing our data with businesses and other organizations. And as data breaches become more common, it's clear that our information is not as safe as we thought it was.

Amidst this growing need for privacy-focused products and services, we have many ways to protect our online privacy, from encrypted messaging apps to browser extensions that block trackers. And as awareness of the importance of privacy grows, we can expect to see even more products and services that cater to our need for privacy. With more people becoming concerned about their online privacy, Brave will likely continue growing in popularity.

Supporting a More Private Web

Launched in 2016, Brave Software was co-founded by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla (Firefox), and Brian Bondy, formerly of Khan Academy and Mozilla.

Brave is an open-source web browser that focuses on privacy. Based on the Chromium web browser, it blocks online advertisements and website trackers by default and allows users to view ads that pay them in its native token called Basic Attention Token or BAT.

With a market capitalization of almost $445 million, BAT token is among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap. At the time of writing, the BAT token is trading at $0.296, up nearly 30% in the past month. However, compared to its all-time high, which it hit in November 2021, the coin is still down about 85%.

Much like the broad crypto market, the BAT token has been in a downtrend for more than a year now. In 2023, however, the market is experiencing a relief rally, and BAT is also up 76% year-to-date.

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Brave users use BAT tokens to send tips to websites and content creators that support BAT or keep the cryptocurrency they earn as rewards. The project purchases the tokens from the open market to distribute these Brave Rewards to users for those ads.

As per the January 2023 announcement, since the inception of Brave Rewards, more than 1,000 advertisers have run over 5,900 Brave Ads campaigns, and millions of Brave Rewards users have earned BAT for their attention to those ads. Also, Brave Rewards users have contributed more than 36 million BAT tokens to their favorite registered content creators, helping support a more private Web.

With the release of Brave version 1.48.x, the platform has announced that users will now have to connect a custodial account to their Brave Rewards profile in order to begin earning and accruing BAT for Brave Ads.

Currently, the platform works with three custodial account provider partners: Gemini, Uphold, and bitFlyer. This gives Brave a place to send users' BAT earnings as well as allows it to eliminate its centralized “virtual BAT” system, which is expected to be done by April 2023.

To support creators, users do not need to connect a custodial account and can do so just by opting into Brave Rewards and using the new “creator support only” experience. However, if a user wants to give more, connecting a custodial account allows them to use BAT purchased elsewhere to support creators in the Brave Rewards ecosystem as well as unlock the Tips feature.

All these changes to Brave Rewards will help the platform combat abuse to better deliver on its promises to legitimate users and creators, said the project at the time, adding that it will also allow them to focus their efforts on building a more decentralized future.

Click here to learn all about investing in Basic Attention Token.

Growing Adoption as More Users Value Privacy

From the beginning, Brave has been on a mission to change how we think about online privacy, and it's doing so in a unique way. Rather than selling your data to advertisers as most other browsers do, Brave actually blocks ads and trackers by default. That means your data stays safe and private, and you can browse the web without being bombarded by ads.

Ad blocking is a key focus area for Brave, and the company has been using machine learning since 2018 to improve its ad-blocking capabilities and improve the overall online experience for users.

For this, Brave uses a simple, built-in technology called “shields” to block ads. By using shields, the browser blocks most trackers, throws away cookies other than the ones from the sites you actually visit, makes your browser harder to recognize and follow without cookies, upgrades you to secure connections whenever sites support them and block malicious code and malicious sites.

This way, Brave doesn't rely on risky extensions to block third-party trackers. It also provides open-source lists for its users to easily customize what's blocked and what's not. Brave offers the best blend of both native ad blocking as well as speed and performance on page load.

While Brave's market share is small and does not yet register against established competitors, the browser's user active users have been on an uptrend ever since it was launched seven years back. Right before the pandemic hit in 2020, Brave had 11.4 million monthly active users (MAU) and 3.6 million daily active users (DAU). But as lockdowns kept people at home, they were forced to essentially spend most of their time online.

This was not only seen in the 2020-2021 bull run but also in Brave Browser users, which grew to 24 million MAU and just under 8 million DAU in 2020. This increase in users skyrocketed in 2021, sending Brave MAU to over 50 million MAU and 15.5 million DAU by the end of the year.

While this growth has slowed since then, the platform continues to attract users, reaching its peak at 62.4 million MAU in July 2022. Since then, these numbers have dropped but remain above 55 million MAU. DAUs, meanwhile, is still growing, hitting 20.8 million in February 2023.

Looking into the other components of the BAT ecosystem, we found that there are currently 10.6 million BAT wallets, and the platform is handling almost 4 million on-chain transactions. As for the creator growth, it has reached 2 million, and YouTube has the highest share of creators using BAT tokens at over 840k. It is followed by Twitter at 227k, then Twitch (180k), Websites (160k), Vimeo (135k), Reddit (133k), and finally, GitHub (67k).

Becoming the Web3 Browser

Amidst all the traction Brave Browser has been gaining, it has been continuously working on its development. Recently, the Brave team announced support for Solana dApps in its mobile browser after adding support for the faster and cheaper blockchain to its desktop browsers last year. With this move, users can now connect with Solana NFT marketplaces Magic Eden and cryptocurrency exchanges Orca and Jupiter Exchange.

According to Amelia Daly, Head of Partnerships at Solana Foundation, advances in UX and mobile are important to onboard new users. With user experience fragmented in crypto, this Brave DApp integration “allows for seamless browser-based connections to your favorite Solana programs.” It was back in November 2021 that Brave and Solana Labs first announced a joint integration.

Rival browser company Opera has already released the first version of its “Crypto Browser,” with a built-in wallet supporting NFTs, several blockchains, and many crypto websites and news outlets a year ago in Jan. 2022 after adding a crypto wallet and dApp explorer to its Android mobile browser in 2018 and to iOS in 2019.

Brave, however, believes it is increasingly becoming the browser of choice for the Web3 world as it continues to expand its reach.

Earlier this month, Brave Browser upgraded all HTTP sites to HTTPS except a small list of incompatible sites, instead of relying on an HTTPS upgrade list provided by HTTPS Everywhere to only do certain sites. While Brave will still use a list, it is only for incompatible sites, which Brave maintains on GitHub.

As per Brave's HTTPS by Default system, whenever the browser detects an HTTP site, it will check if it is in the list of incompatible sites, and if it is not, Brave will try to upgrade the connection to HTTPS for improved privacy and security. If that does not work, as not all HTTP sites support HTTPS, it will fall back to using HTTP for the connection.

Last month Brave Software also tested a Quick Commands feature in its web browser, which gives users access to a prompt to run different commands from just that prompt right away. It is not a new feature in the browser and has long been introduced by Google in Chrome.

While not enabled by default in Brave, it is available in all browser versions. Some users may find this feature useful to execute commands that are not easily accessible in the browser or get executed faster.

One of the most important developments came this year in the form of access to the Tor browser. This isn't the first move by Brave to secure its browser, as it has previously announced support for Tor Bridges in Private Windows with Tor in its 1.44 version.

Now, with its new feature, Brave is taking another step towards an open and free internet for all. The Brave 1.47 version directly added the Tor Snowflake feature to its browser system.

Tor Snowflake is a censorship-circumvention technology that uses a mix of proxy and WebRTC protocols. It was developed by the Tor Project to allow people to access censored websites and applications. However, unlike VPNs, users don't need to install a separate app to connect to a Snowflake proxy and bypass censorship, as it is usually embedded within existing apps.

Final Word

As we saw here, while Brave Browser may not be as popular as some of its competitor, it continues to gain more and more users as privacy becomes a critical factor for growing numbers of people. Its built-in ad blocker further boosts productivity and saves time for users.

Besides being paramount where privacy is concerned, Brave Browser's crypto-for-attention revenue model and its integrated Tor mode appeal to many users.