Advertisement-centric web browser Brave has recently added a crypto wallet feature to its test and development version. Developers note that the native wallet is added to enhance support for Brave’s native cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token (BAT).
The test version, which is known as Brave Nightly, recently had a local cryptocurrency wallet feature added to it. The news of the update outlined a screenshot of the wallet interface that previously only connected to Uphold, a third-party cryptocurrency wallet service preferred by Brave for BAT reward disbursements.
In the updated interface that’s currently available in Brave Nightly, support for local wallets includes popular hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor.
Brave would soon allow users to move their BAT to a native wallet of their choice in a more accessible manner.
While no dates were rolled out for the release of the feature, it seems to point towards the kind of native wallet support that would make life easier for many users of Brave.
Instead of having to jump through third party websites and extensions, they could connect their BAT wallet to another wallet of their choice — all from an official channel in their browser.
To Understand the Importance of This Update, It’s Essential to Comprehend Brave’s Business Model
The Brave browser focuses on the digital ads industry and making ad delivery more beneficial for advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Its unique selling point (USP) has been its sweeping view towards the online ads medium.
Often, usual ad delivery methods end up showing ads to those who are not related to the target market. At other times, the ads are stopped through ad blocking extensions by those who do not want to see them.
As a result, advertisers often spend their marketing budget on nothing.
The publishers showing the ad do not receive the kind of revenue they deserve for displaying advertisements.
Brave browser solves this problem by incentivizing viewers actually watch and notice the ads.
It does so by allowing people to earn rewards for simply being a viewer of ads that are suited to them. This way, those who want to benefit from the program end up going through targeted advertisements with genuine interest instead of merely enduring them for the sake of it. As a result, they receive rewards in the form of the Basic Attention Token (BAT).
This way, the Brave browser also takes care of advertisers by making sure that their ads are delivered to their target audience. At the same time, it also ensures that publishers who are showing the ads through their platforms get rewarded instead of being questioned about showing ads to the non-targeted audience.
The system designed by the Brave browser proves to be beneficial for everyone. While ad viewers receive the BAT Token as a reward, the ad publishers get the benefit of sharing ad revenue by delivering ads to the right audience. The advertisers ensure that ad spend is targeted on a focused advertising campaign.
Brave Has Grown to Be Quite Popular, But It Has Its Problems
Over the past year, Brave has shown that its new model has the power to appeal to all three stakeholders in the online advertisement medium, the ad viewers, publishers, and advertisers.
But since the web browser is new, its reward system doesn’t come without any flaws. While it is still very much fair and provides rewards to ad viewers without any discrepancies, the disbursement method often proves to be a hassle for many users.
Instead of providing a native wallet through its browser, Brave requires the users who sign up with its service to use the Uphold wallet.
Given that Uphold is not a native BAT application and remains a third-party service, many users do not enjoy turning to it to receive their BAT rewards. But Brave has stuck to the third-party wallet so far in the unavailability of any native cryptocurrency wallet, which many believe is due to Uphold’s extensive know your customer (KYC) procedure.
This was confirmed by Brave co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich, who mentioned that Brave wanted to keep bad players out of receiving BAT tokens for everyone’s safety and Uphold’s KYC serves as an effective solution for this requirement.
Eich also mentioned that complying with KYC through Uphold had proven to be the right decision for the company, which has noted an increasing number of viewers and publishers through its operations.
But given that more and more users are now complaining about having to endure Uphold’s signups, Brave is slowly moving towards native wallet support. Eich also clarified that it was not to put regulatory concerns behind, but simply to evolve the system in a way that it remained compliant to KYC regulations while also being easy to use for ad viewers.
The Native Wallet Update is Relevant to Brave’s Growth
Since it is clear that many users of Brave do not want the rewards process to include a third party, this particular cryptocurrency wallet update seems very important for Brave’s growth moving forward.
While Uphold’s services are quite lauded in the cryptocurrency sector, using them with Brave browser creates difficulty for those users who already a preferred cryptocurrency wallet.
This way, users who want to become ad viewers on Brave often end up signing up with two different wallet services. This makes cryptocurrency management difficult and restricts them from using their preferred wallet to receive BAT rewards.
While Brave hasn’t outlined a date for an update where users would be able to set their local wallets as the primary destination for BAT rewards, many believe that this update is the first step towards making it possible.
Those who want to remain updated with this particular development, you could check Brave’s official subreddit, which is quite active and keeps getting new posts regarding Brave updates.
The ZB Group View
The ZB Group is aware that in a speed-oriented world, slow progress may seem frustrating and even excruciating at times. Yet events such as this show that slow and steady progress is present and is happening within the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector. The Brave browser provides compelling features and is in line with every single stakeholder within the Brave browser ecosystem. Overall alignment provided by blockchain technology is a core part of why the ZB Group is invested the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector.
About ZB Group
ZB Group was founded in 2012 with the goal of providing leadership to the blockchain development space and today manages a network that includes digital assets exchanges, wallets, capital ventures, research institutes, and media. The Group’s flagship platform is ZB.com, the industry leading digital asset exchange. The platform launched in early 2013 and boasts one of the world’s largest trading communities.
Learn more about ZB Exchange by visiting www.zb.com.
