My Experience with Brave BrowserI am very new to Crypto space and cryptocurrencies. My experiments and associated experience are basic and limited when compared to other users who are in this space for a while. This is my personal experience of using Brave browser and collecting Basic Attention Token (BAT). Do not consider this as a professional advice or opinion.
How did I get into Brave browser?
I am a sports enthusiast. In late 2018, I got into Scorum to blog on sports events and analysis. That engagement exposed me to the fringes of the crypto centre. I never thought I would dive deep into this space.
In early 2019, I came across the Brave proposal and how the Team was trying to address the decentralization and the ad-revenue distribution issue. As many other users around the world, I was not too much hyped about the project because I did not know the benefits of ad revenue decentralization.
It took me almost a year to convince myself to try the easiest way into the crypto space. I downloaded Brave browser. My initial attraction to the browser was the idea where I can earn crypto tokens while browsing. I thought it’s a twin benefit as I am always on my screen anyway. What could possibly go wrong?
What was I Expecting?
I was expecting the crypto earning to be easy and straightforward. The idea was to use Brave browser and the browser team will send me an email with crypto tokens.
Well, it was easy in theory but I never realized that I had to first educate myself to understand the basic concept of Ethereum wallets, transaction fees, and multiple sites and forms of wallets before knowing how to actually convert your BAT to something usable i.e. fiat. It took me a month to understand what fiat is.
What was my Experience?
The browser itself was sleek and smooth. I always preferred Chrome and Brave was no different. I found the browser to be buttery smooth and in some cases way easier to use than other browsers. I can use Brave even if there was no incentive - BAT- attached to it. With the concept of Brave rewards, I definitely liked the user experience and associated benefits.
After downloading the browser I fully immersed myself into the Brave ecosystem. I opened new wallets with Metamask, Uphold and recently on Atomic Wallet. I registered my Reddit, Twitter and Youtube accounts as content creators. I wanted to do everything I could to get involved in the project.
However, I ran into some problems. Some were due to my technical inefficiencies and some were due to the Brave ecosystem development standard. I could not register my blogs on Wordpress and Blogspot as they do not allow brave plugins. And, I could not figure out how to register myself as I am not an expert who can change HTML codes or DNS.
Having immersed myself into the ecosystem, it felt great to receive the ultimate rewards in the form of BAT as a user. Having said that, I do not like the way the reward system and token distribution are being handled by the Brave team.
- I use Mac and an Android phone. Brave is my default browser in both platforms. I spent most of the time on my computer and even then the reward I received on my Mac was much lesser than the rewards on the Android phone. I do not understand the distribution mechanism.
- Plus, the reward system on my Mac still does not display the amount of BAT i received. There is discrepancy between the actual earnings versus displayed earnings. Some months the difference was much higher.
I don’t know the reasons behind these issues. I tried to reach out to the Brave Reddit forum but it was too much of a hassle to go through those conversations.
What’s my verdict on its Usability?
I will definitely keep using Brave browser as I am sold by the concept. I hope they will continue to improve the user experience and will manage the most common issues users face. I still think that the browser is capable of serving general users like myself. Their proposal to solve the reward distribution system seems to be a winning proposal in this increasingly decentralized tech future.