What’s a BAT? What’s Brave? How does all this work?
Brave is an internet browser built off Google’s Chrome browser. So what makes it different? Brave’s mission is to solve the ever-growing problem of ads that track you and follow you around wherever you go. Brave’s goal is to pay its users every time they view an ad. Seriously? Yes, seriously. They also want to give users the opportunity to pay their favorite internet publishers directly in exchange for an ad-free experience online. It comes with a built-in ad blocker as well as a built-in wallet to keep all your loot when you browse. Why not try out Brave for yourself?
What’s BAT?
BAT stands for Basic Attention Token. It’s a cryptocurrency used to pay Brave’s users and Brave’s publishers. When you first download Brave, it’ll ask you if you want to create a wallet. As a promotional effort aimed at early adopters, for a limited time Brave would fill your wallet with as much as 25 BAT (about $12 at the time of this writing)! You may not get a wallet full of BAT now, but as a normal user, Brave keeps track of how many HTTPS upgrades, ads and trackers blocked. Every now and again you’ll see an ad while using Brave, but odds are they are ads that verified on Brave’s network. In other words, these are ads that clients pay the users (through Brave) to see. So check your wallet every now and again!
How Do I earn BAT?
As previously mentioned, BAT can be earned simply by viewing ads on Brave’s network. However there’s even more opportunity as a verified Brave publisher. As a content creator working with Brave, you can create your stuff like normal (YouTube videos, Twitch streams, blogs, etc), but if another Brave user stumbles across your content, Brave allows those users to pay you directly! Users can make one-time tips to your favorite publishers, or schedule monthly contributions at any amount you like.
As a user, you feed your wallet using an external crypto account using BTC, ETH, LTC, or BAT. As a publisher, your earned BAT tokens end up in an account managed by Uphold. If you don’t have an account with Uphold, you will be required to create one when signing up for the Brave publisher rewards program. Once the coins are in your Uphold account, you can do with them whatever you like. Either spend them, invest them, or put them into your own Brave wallet.