Competition on the horizonīrave Payments isn’t the only micro-payment service aiming to block ads and ask for voluntary contributions from fans. The experience will, of course, be different to different people, but I believe many will already have a preference in web browsers and will want their browsers to work in the ways they’re used to. Brave is full of bugs and I don’t feel at home. I was curious about Brave and I’ve contributed funds into their payment scheme and used their browser as my daily driver. I haven’t seen any marketing material nor anything special about the Brave browser that I believe would appeal to a mass audience.

It will be very difficult for Brave to attract paying customers with a subpar web browser and a difficult to understand payment model where customers pay for something they’re used to get for free. Bitcoin exchanges have a long and established history of fraud and there are many bad actors in this market. Brave uses a weak fraud protection service and yet they recommend their customers go to the shadier corners of the web, cough up their credit cards, and purchase Bitcoins. There isn’t anything special about their browser, and it lacks essential features like a history manager while the features it has are still missing years of development and polishing. It’s still in beta, but Brave seems to be focusing on creating a minimal viable product without an identity of its own. The core of Brave Payments is already implemented as a Chromium browser extension (WebExtension), and could have been made compatible with existing browsers including Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and others rather than making it its own thing. Wouldn’t it be easier to convince potential customers to install an extension to supplement the web browser they already like than convincing them to change all their habits, and uproot and move to a new web browser?

I believe Brave Software made a big mistake when they choose to build a browser rather than an extension, and here’s why. There isn’t all that much innovation in the Brave browser itself except for the Brave Payments system that rewards the websites users are willing to pay for.

Brave rewards payment