In this article, I'll talk about earning free crypto with Brave, my first monthly payout, and my experience with the browser. I think most of you know about it already but maybe someone out there doesn't.
What is Brave?
Brave is a free open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser (Source).
I first read about Brave about a month ago in a post by @the-bitcoin-dood and I decided to check it out.
The Brave experience
Before Brave, I was a chrome user and the transition was very smooth. All my Chrome extensions still work perfectly with Brave and I didn't have to do anything other than importing my settings from Chrome. The same goes for passwords, browsing history and all that jazz.
It also has a "built-in" ad-blocker that I find quite good. I even removed my old ad-blocker and now I'm using only Brave Shields and I have no complaints so far.
Another cool feature that I'm still exploring is that it supports Tor for anonymous navigation. As I said, I don't know much about this feature yet, but it's supposed to be even more private than a regular anonymous tab (which is also an option).
Earning crypto with Brave
Ok, so far so good, but how is Brave different from other browsers (or at least from the browsers I knew before)?
Now, this is where things get interesting! Brave has a rewards program that lets users choose to earn crypto by viewing selected advertisements. The token in question is BAT (Basic Attention Token), which is based on Ethereum.
As a user, you can also contribute to the websites you visit with a portion of the BAT you earn. You can either set it to auto-contribute, in which case Brave divides your contribution among the sites you visit based on time spent or you can donate manually when you visit a site. That means, for example, that you contribute with leofinance.io, which is a verified creator.
My first payout and experience so far
Today, after a little under a month using the browser, I claimed my first payout from Brave rewards and I was awarded 0.5 BAT, which is around 0.36 USD. It may sound like it's not much but the main thing to consider here is I didn't do ANYTHING differently than what I've been doing for the last decade using Chrome. Ok, I had to click one ad here and there but even that it's not very different from before except, of course, for the fact that I'm being paid for doing it.
During the first few days, I was always checking my balance to see how much I was earning but now I don't even bother anymore. Just knowing that it's adding up little by little is good enough for me.
Conclusion
I'm very happy with Brave and I can't imagine going back to my old browser now. It almost feels silly not to use it! I hope Brave get's even bigger and better in the future.
My next step now is to try Presearch, which is a search engine that also rewards the user with crypto. More on that in the future!
This is it! As I said, I think most people on Leo already know and use Brave but I felt like sharing my experience anyway. I hope you enjoyed it.