One of the benefits I benefited from using the Brave browser in addition to privacy protection and a great adblocker was the optional Brave rewards program that incentivized users to view ads served by the Brave browser.
Although the income from watching ads wasn't much, it was much better than encountering pop-up ads that sometimes you just can't escape and don't earn anything for it. I initially faced the challenge of setting up my brave rewards account with support because a pop-up appeared with 2 BAT as a requirement to start owning a support wallet.
However thanks to a post from @scottcbusinessabout brave rewards I was able to quickly get an account with Uphold. So I started enjoying small monthly payments from the bravery rewards program. All that seems to be a thing of the past now, at least until the Brave team resolves the issue of limited verification for a select few countries.
First I noticed that this month (September) I can no longer log in to verify my wallet in the Bravery Rewards section as I usually do once a month. After several tries I still got the screen. The last time I tried, I was told that verification is no longer available in my region. I was taken aback by the reason for this change in terms. So I started searching the web for the reason.
I finally came across a post in the Brave community discussion where the bomb was dropped. The post stated that as of July 12, verification will only be available to Brave Rewards participants who used UpHold wallets in only 18 countries, which are:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
Hong Kong
Ireland
Italy
Holland
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
The post further states that:
“For countries no longer on this list, Uphold and Brave will continue to work together to evaluate whether and how quickly such countries can be supported again.
Note that those currently verified in areas that are no longer supported will remain until they are naturally logged out over time or you press a button to disconnect Brave Rewards from your Uphold account. After logging out or disconnecting from Uphold, users in unsupported regions will not be able to re-login or re-verify Brave Rewards with Uphold."
While there may be actual reasons for this suspension, although I believe they may be legal or regulatory in nature, the post left a lot of room for speculation as no specific reason was given as to why the suspension had to be done.
One bold community forum post noted that the number of countries where verification seems to be steadily decreasing instead of increasing. He suggested that the reason for supporting fewer countries was to prevent users from sending their earned BAT from the browser to other destinations or wallets.
Another question that comes to mind (which only the Brave team can answer) is whether there is still a need to use third-party wallets like Uphold and Gemini for the Brave rewards program, since the Brave browser now has its own built-in wallet.
Be that as it may, Brave browser still remains the favorite browser on my mobile device because its ad blocking service was the best I've seen among all the browsers I've used so far. I'm open to suggestions for any other browser that can beat it in this regard.
