Brave Software, makers of the innovative Brave browser which combines privacy with a blockchain-based digital advertising platform, announced the official launch of Brave 1.0. The Brave open source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience, while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards. In addition to desktop and Android devices, Brave’s private ads and payment platform (Brave Rewards) is now available for iPhones and iPads.

“Today’s Internet is broken, and users suffer the most. They are being tracked, tagged, and exploited; this not only violates privacy, but slows down page loads, drains batteries, and makes for a miserable experience. Meanwhile, publishers are losing revenue at a record pace due to a few gigantic super-companies and too many ad tech intermediaries. Advertisers are wasting time and money on an industry filled with fraud. Everyone with a legitimate stake in the open Web loses in this environment,” said Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of Brave Software. “Surveillance capitalism has plagued the Web for far too long and we’ve reached a critical inflection point where privacy-by-default is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have. Users, advertisers, and publishers have finally had enough, and Brave is the answer. Brave 1.0 is the browser reimagined, transforming the Web to put users first with a private, browser-based ads and payment platform. With Brave, the Web can be a rewarding experience for all, without users paying with their privacy.”

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“Either we all accept the $330 billion ad-tech industry treating us as their products, exploiting our data, piling on more data breaches and privacy scandals, and starving publishers of revenue; or we reject the surveillance economy and replace it with something better that works for everyone. That’s the inspiration behind Brave,” he added.

The Brave browser was previously in beta release and already has 8.7 million monthly active users across the globe. As data privacy and security issues take center stage around the world, users turn to Brave for its privacy-first approach that natively blocks trackers, invasive ads, and device fingerprinting — leading to substantial improvements in speed, privacy, security, performance, and battery life. Default settings block phishing, malware, and malvertising. Embedded plugins, which have proven to be an ongoing security risk, are disabled by default. Browsing data always stays private and on the user’s device, which means Brave will never see or store the data on its servers or sell user data to third-parties. With the launch of Brave 1.0, users  have access to a full set of unique features, including:

• Brave Rewards to fund the open web – Users can support their favorite publishers and content creators by activating Brave Rewards and its integrated Brave wallet on both desktop and mobile. This feature allows users to send BAT as tips for great content, either directly as they browse or by defaulting to recurring monthly payments to continuously support the over 300,000 verified websites, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Wikipedia, or creators on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, GitHub and more.
• Brave Ads that compensate users for their attention – Brave is built on top of the first global private ad platform, designed from the start to value users’ attention and privacy. Brave has pioneered a new blockchain-based advertising model that reforms the current system with privacy by design and 70 percent revenue share to users in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). Brave Ads, the world’s first private ad network and part of Brave Rewards, allows users to opt-in to view relevant privacy-preserving ads in exchange for earning BAT. When users opt into Brave Rewards, Brave Ads is enabled by default. Ad matching happens directly on the user’s device, so their data is never sent to anyone, and they see rewarding ads without web-wide mass surveillance. To date, Brave Ads has delivered nearly 475 privacy-preserving ad campaigns, sparking 130 million ad confirmation events, from brands such as Intel, Pizza Hut, Home Chef, and more. Users can transfer earned BAT out of their Brave Rewards wallet and convert the tokens to many digital assets and fiat currencies, after completing a verification process with digital money platform Uphold. More significantly, they can contribute to a better Web by keeping the BAT in their browser to automatically support online creators via Brave Rewards.
• Brave Shields for automatic ad and tracker blocking – Brave Shields, on by default and customizable from the address bar, block invasive third-party ads, trackers, and autoplay videos immediately – without needing to install any additional programs. Users can now confidently browse the web knowing that their interests and reading habits are not being tracked. Because Brave Shields removes the friction of unwanted content, Brave loads websites up to 3 to 6 times faster than other browsers and introduces significant memory and battery savings on desktop and mobile. In fact, Brave saves¹ an average of 27 seconds per page load against Chrome on macOS and 22 seconds per page against Firefox, and Brave uses 58% less data than Chrome to load those same pages. Brave also uses less memory than other browsers, with an improvement of 40% over Chrome and 47% over Firefox.

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“As the conversation around data privacy and transparency moves increasingly into the forefront, Brave shows us that it’s possible to create a more equitable value exchange between brands, content creators and consumers,” said Nick Coronges, Global Chief Technology Officer at R/GA and Partner at R/GA Ventures. “We’re excited to see Brave’s continued innovation in the space with the 1.0 release, and looking forward to partnering on future collaborations that put people in charge of their data and their time spent online.”

Brave comes with a modern take on a streamlined user interface that users will find comfortable when switching from Chrome or other browsers, offering extension support as well as an easy system to import bookmarks, passwords, cookies, and browsing history, making the transition to Brave seamless.

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