Brave Software

Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser, which automatically blocks online advertisements and website trackers in its default settings. It also provides users the choice to turn on optional ads that pay users for their attention in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) cryptocurrency. Users can then send contributions to websites and content creators, which support BAT in the form of tips along with the ability to keep the cryptocurrency they earned.

Brave Software's headquarters are in San Francisco, California.

As of August 2022, Brave claims to have more than 57.42 million monthly active users, 19.3 million daily active users and a network of more than 1.6 million content creators.

History

On 28 May 2015, CEO Brendan Eich and CTO Brian Bondy founded Brave Software. On 20 January 2016, Brave Software launched the first version of Brave with ad-blocking capabilities and announced plans for a privacy-respecting ad platform.

In June 2018, Brave released a pay-to-surf test-version of the browser. This version of Brave came preloaded with approximately 250 ads and sent a detailed log of the user's browsing activity to Brave for the short-term purpose of testing this functionality. Brave announced that expanded trials would follow. Later that month, Brave added support for Tor in its desktop browser's private-browsing mode.

Until December 2018, Brave ran on a fork of Electron called Muon, which they marketed as a "more secure fork". Nevertheless, Brave developers moved to Chromium, citing a need to ease their maintenance burden. Brave Software released the final Muon-based version with the intention that it would stop working and instructed users to update as its end-of-life approached.

In June 2019, Brave started testing a new ad-blocking rule-matching algorithm implemented in Rust, replacing the previous C++ one. The uBlock Origin and Ghostery algorithms inspired the new logic, which Brave claims to be on average 69 times faster than the previous algorithm.

Brave launched its stable release, version 1.0, on 13 November 2019, while having 8.7 million monthly active users overall. At the time, it had approximately 3 million active users on a daily basis. Brave 1.0, running on Android, iOS, Windows 10, macOS, or Linux, integrated "almost all of Brave's marquee features across all platforms", according to ''Engadget''.

In November 2020, Brave reported having 20 million monthly users, and, in September 2021, it passed 36 million monthly active users.

In March 2021, Brave built its search engine out of Tailcat, which it acquired earlier that year from Cliqz, a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media based in Germany. Tailcat was designed to deliver search results without logging user activity or creating profiles.

In April 2021, Brave became the first browser to be added to the Epic Games Store.

In June 2021, the public beta for Brave Search, Brave Software's search engine, was launched. It exited its beta phase in June 2022 along with an announcement that within its year-long beta testing period Brave Search surpassed 2.5 billion total queries.

Business model

Brave uses its Basic Attention Token (BAT) to drive revenue. Originally incorporated in Delaware as Hyperware Labs, Inc. in 2015, the company later changed its name to Brave Software, Inc. and registered in California, where it is headquartered.

By August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, and the Digital Currency Group.

In November 2019, Brave launched Brave Ads, an ad network. Brave Software takes 30% of the ad revenue and the rest is given back to the users. As consumers browse, they are presented with advertisements.

Features

Brave Firewall + VPN

Brave Firewall + VPN is a browser based system wide firewall and VPN for iOS. It uses the Guardian VPN.

Brave Search

Brave Search is a search engine developed by Brave and released in Beta form in March 2021, following the acquisition of Tailcat, a privacy-focused search engine from Cliqz. Since October 2021, Brave Search is the default search engine for Brave browser users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Brave Wallet

Brave Wallet is a native crypto wallet with no extensions required. It supports all EVM compatible chains (Polygon, xDai, Avalanche, etc.) and L2 chains. The Brave Wallet support is limited to Desktop browser, but is planned to be extended to mobile browsers. In addition, Brave Wallet can be used to store non-fungible tokens.

Brave Wallet (Legacy)

Brave Wallet (Legacy) is a fork of MetaMask, which comes pre-installed with the Brave browser. This lets the browser interact with websites supporting the MetaMask API's to sign crypto transactions for supported Ethereum Virtual Machine networks.

Brave Swap

Brave Swap is an aggregator for cryptocurrency DEX's based on 0x. It lets users swap Ethereum tokens for other tokens from within the browser. Brave makes money off this by taking a small "router" fee. It plans to return 20% of this fee to the user in the form of BAT tokens.

Privacy

All user data is kept private on the user's device and is not accessible by any third party. The browsing data is not sent to Brave's servers, so only the user of the device can see the browsing data. A research study analyzing browser privacy by Professor Douglas J. Leith of the University of Dublin reported that Brave had the highest level of privacy of the browsers tested. Brave did not have "any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address overtime, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers".

To prevent browser fingerprinting, Brave uses fingerprint randomization, which makes the browser look different to websites over browser restart, to ensure Brave's users cannot be uniquely identified or tracked periodically by using browser fingerprinting.

On 15 October 2021, Brave announced a new privacy feature dubbed "debouncing". The new feature is designed to disarm bounce tracking, a method of Internet tracking through intermediary domains that load when users click on a link. Debouncing will automatically recognize when users are about to visit a known tracking domain and renavigates the user to their intended destination, skipping the tracking site altogether.

Tests conducted by Digital Trends found Brave to be the only mainstream browser to pass the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks test.

In April 2022, Brave announced a de-AMP feature that bypasses Google's AMP

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