[dshade]

ok. back in now

[dshade]

getting tempting here again.

[stockvaper]

Brave integrates privacy friendly translate option in its browser

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/09/22/brave-integrates-privacy-friendly-translate-option-in-its-browser/

[dshade]

interesting level here. seen it before and based here for awhile. times are different but the product usage is growing as well.

[stockvaper]

Brave Now Supports Celo Blockchain and Dapps
The decentralized, EVM-compatible, PoS platform Celo is now accessible to over 59 million Brave users around the world.

"Celo, the carbon-negative, mobile-first, layer-1 platform is now accessible with Brave, a crypto industry leader with 59+ million browser users and built-in Brave Wallets to provide greater global financial inclusivity and access to Web3 tools.

Aligned with Celo’s mission to create the conditions of prosperity for all, the integration of Celo on Brave following it’s v1.40 release allows users to engage with Mento stable assets (including cUSD, cEUR, cREAL) through self-custodial Brave Wallets, as well as with Celo’s diverse ecosystem of purpose-driven, decentralized applications (dapps) accessible through Brave Browser, like Ubeswap, Moola, impactMarket or Cyberbox".

More ....
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220909005268/en/Brave-Now-Supports-Celo-Blockchain-and-Dapps

[dshade]

thanks

[Investors3]

Brave adds 15 new leading DApps to its Wallet Partner program
Last updated Aug 23, 2022



Brave’s native crypto wallet now features integrations from Aldrin, ApolloX, Bonfida, Cropper, Holaplex, Honeyswap, Jet Protocol, Marinade, NounsDAO, SolanaFM, Solend, SolBlaze, Spartan Protocol, Velodrome, and XY Finance.

Following the recent launch of Solana DApp support in our browser (version 1.41), we’re thrilled to announce that nine leading DApps on Solana have joined Brave’s Wallet Partner program. Six new Ethereum and/or EVM-compatible DApps have also joined the program this month. This brings the total of partners to 27 since the inception of our program just two months ago, as the Brave browser continues to expand its Web3 integrations.

Through this program, partners add Brave Wallet to their list of supported wallet connections and co-market their DApp integration with Brave using the browser’s marketing channels, blogs, communities, and social media.

In addition to raising awareness of Brave Wallet, the program also offers an opportunity for Brave and its partners to work together on further BAT utility projects or integrations.

These are the 15 projects Brave is excited to welcome to the Wallet Partner program this month:

Aldrin
Aldrin is building what they deem is the best swap experience and set of tools to allow anyone to earn passive income through DeFi. Their mission is to help you cut your lifetime of work in half. They focus on the finer details to create a seamless user experience. When it comes to security, Aldrin doesn’t leave anything behind—the automated market maker (AMM) is audited by Kudelski, whose past projects include Solana and Binance. With over 450 trading pairs and 180 liquidity pools, users have a wide range of options to either swap, trade, stake, or provide liquidity.

“Integrating Brave is opening the doors to new users who will be able to use the power of DeFi. There is still a lack of knowledge amongst the masses when it comes to DeFi products and what they’re capable of—we want to show them that both pro traders and newcomers can reap the same benefits in the same platform,” said the team at Aldrin.

ApolloX
ApolloX is an industry-leading decentralized solution shaping Web3 trading for retail and institutional traders. Its product suite consists of ApolloX DEX, the biggest decentralized crypto derivatives exchange on BNB Chain, and ApolloX DEX Engine, a bespoke, ready-to-go solution for partners looking to launch their own derivatives DEX. Notable DeFi platforms like PancakeSwap, LaunchZone and SafePal leverage ApolloX DEX Engine to seamlessly deploy derivatives trading on their platforms in just a few steps.

“Integrating Brave Wallet with ApolloX empowers millions of users around the world to explore ApolloX’s unique platform and tap into thriving DeFi ecosystems. We’re thrilled to be working with Brave to advance our shared vision of the Web,” said a lead member at ApolloX.

Bonfida
Bonfida’s primary product is the Solana Name Service (SNS). SNS has a straightforward mission of providing users with a Web3 ID. One of the clear benefits of the name service is a human-readable name that maps to a SOL address. Wallet address formats can be a barrier to entry, and therefore having an identifiable address can facilitate payments, efficiency, and overall user experience in our sphere. A name, not a number.

“It’s pretty simple; crypto shouldn’t be difficult or confusing. The Solana Name Service has a beeline focus on convenience and enhancing user experience and in this manner, we will contribute to Brave’s native crypto browsing experience. Together, we can make Web3 easy and accelerate mass adoption amongst Brave’s robust community. We offer an identity, a name, a product with vast use cases but at the core, a domain name that cares to help users have the best Web3 experience,” bonfida.sol said.

Cropper
Cropper is the most comprehensive launchpad on Solana, providing initial dex offerings (IDO) to carefully vetted projects, as well as a range of associated services to help build their initial liquidity within the ecosystem. Services include Liquidity Pool, Yield Farming, Staking, Bonding or Option Mining.

“Cropper is on a mission to provide all users with a secure and enjoyable platform for staking, farming, IDO participations, and more. To continue these efforts, integrating Brave Wallet to Cropper is essential. In doing so, we can provide more users with unique DeFi opportunities, as well as ensure a secure and user-friendly wallet option. We look forward to continuing working closely with the Brave team in a joint effort to increase DeFi access and adoption across the globe,” said Croppish, core contributor at Cropper.

Holaplex
Holaplex provides enterprise-grade NFT commerce solutions and is the trusted technology partner for top brands and Web3 protocols, with over 10k creators utilizing our open source, decentralized products on Solana. Built to scale with your business, Holaplex applies its suite of open source tools and a network of trusted protocol partners to build top NFT experiences for brands.

“We are excited to work with Brave in integrating their wallet into our suite of open-source tools and support their indexing needs to run performant applications on the Solana blockchain as we look to bring Web3 technology to the masses.” said Alex Kehaya CEO at Holaplex, Inc.

Honeyswap
Honeyswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX), deployed and maintained by 1Hive DAO. It’s the first Uniswap V2 Fork deployed outside of Ethereum mainnet, on Gnosis Chain (formerly xDai). Honeyswap is deployed both on Gnosis and Polygon sidechains and utilizes the eco-routing developed by dxDao, acting as an aggregator that finds the best routes for your trades based on the available liquidity on all the other DEXs it supports. What makes Honeyswap unique is that the trading fees collected by the protocol are used to buy back HNY, which is, in turn, used to fund public goods. Hence, the more volume, the more public goods are funded through 1Hive. “Together we thrive,’’ said the1Hive DAO contributors.

Jet Protocol
Jet Protocol is a non-custodial borrowing and lending protocol built on Solana. Jet is evolving rapidly and recently implemented its own governance UI—JetGovern—that enables token holders to participate in JetDAO to vote and shape the protocol. Jet’s core MVP is an innovative cross-margin pooled lending protocol. The latest iteration of the Jet Protocol is internally named ‘V2’ and is set to launch in 2022. It’s focused on margin trading (Jet Margin) and fixed-rate, fixed-term borrowing and lending (Jet Bonds).

Jet’s Co-Founder James Moreau said, “Given Brave’s broad and growing adoption, focus on security and user experience, as well as a crypto-native ethos, we’re thrilled to see them support Solana-based web applications such as Jet Protocol through a browser wallet interface.”

Marinade
Marinade is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Its mission is to strengthen and decentralize Solana and onboard more people around the world to DeFi. Marinade is the creator of the mSOL token: a collateralized version of SOL a user receives when they stake their SOL in the Marinade staking pool. Holders of mSOL tokens not only earn yield on their staked SOL, but can also use the fully liquid mSOL collateral token to earn additional yield through a growing selection of DeFi strategies. Marinade is a DAO with a governance token, MNDE, which can be locked to mint a Chef NFT that enables governance power and the ability to vote on validator and liquidity mining gauges.

“Marinade applauds Brave Wallet’s integration of Solana and support of SPL tokens. Internet users come to Brave because they seek performance, security, and censorship resistance. And now when they connect the Brave Wallet to the Marinade DApp to liquid stake their SOL for mSOL, not only are they getting SOL staking yield without sacrificing DeFi opportunities, but they are also playing a role in creating a more decentralized and performant Solana blockchain,” said Michael Repetny, Growth at Marinade.

NounsDAO
Nouns is a generative non-fungible token (NFT) project on the Ethereum blockchain. Nouns are 32x32 pixelated NFT characters based on people, places, and things. One noun is auctioned every 24 hours, forever. Each Noun sold contributes to a treasury governed by Nouns holders, where one Noun is equal to one vote. At the time of writing, the DAO holds 26,354 ETH or roughly $43,800,000 USD. Nouns are CC0 and fully open-source, which means the rights and project’s code are shared in the public domain. This status has allowed Nouns to proliferate freely via over a hundred derivative collections, works of art, communities, and products. Nouns are characterized by their Nounish glasses, sometimes referred to as Noggles. The ultimate goal of the NounsDAO is to expand the reach of their brand, what they call “The Nouns Virtuous Cycle: Nouns is a protocol for proliferating Nouns.”

SolanaFM
SolanaFM is the first indexer on Solana that allows you to gather and process data with maximum efficiency. The platform provides easy access to the full historical data within the Solana network. The platform facilitates indexing and querying services and enables protocols within the ecosystem to easily create fast and scalable applications. With its in-house infrastructure, SolanaFM built what they call the ‘friendliest’ explorer on Solana, on top of the fastest APIs and scalable indexing needs.

“Brave Wallet plays a vital role in bridging users from Web 2.0 to Web3. We believe in Web 2.0-based DApps which integrate Web3 (like Brave) to showcase how easy Web3 would be—this would be key to attract the masses,” said FA2, Co-Founder at SolanaFM.

Solend
Solend is the autonomous interest rate machine for lending on Solana. Users can earn interest and borrow 50 assets across 18 pools on the fast, low-fee, and scalable DeFi lending protocol.

“I’ve personally been using Brave and love the product. Integrating Solend into Brave’s suite of offerings is a no-brainer with their large user base and attractive offerings. With Brave’s dedication to a good and private UX, it fits our vision for the on-chain world and we love to work together to bring the vision of bringing DeFi solutions to anyone in the world to life,” said Soju at Solend.

SolBlaze
SolBlaze is an organization committed to building Solana’s ecosystem through the development of core utilities vital to Solana’s growth. They initially built the first-ever Solana mainnet-beta faucet, onboarding hundreds of thousands of users onto Solana. Then they created the first-ever front-end JavaScript payments SDK for Solana, making it easier for developers to integrate Solana payment flows into their websites. They’ve also launched BlazeStake, one of the largest liquid staking pools by validator set on Solana, making it easier for users to participate in decentralizing the network while interacting with the broader DeFi ecosystem. SolBlaze has integrated Brave Wallet across their entire lineup of applications, and are continuing to work on a variety of exciting projects on Solana, including an RPC status dashboard and an innovative way to pay for transaction fees.

“Brave closely aligns with SolBlaze’s mission to build Solana’s ecosystem, onboard the next billion users and developers to Solana, and strengthen the decentralization of the Solana network. We’re super excited to be working with Brave to accomplish these goals together,” said the founder of SolBlaze.

Spartan Protocol
Spartan Protocol pairs a unique liquidity-sensitive AMM algorithm with the low gas fees and fast settlement of BNB Chain to provide a range of open DeFi services to users looking to swap or earn yield on their assets. SPARTA is the common settlement asset inside every liquidity pool to remove any need for external oracles. The ethos behind Spartan is that it’s built by the community, for the community.

“Brave is strongly aligned with the values of our community. When thinking about open-source building, privacy, and education, it is easy to see opportunities to collaborate and improve the experience for all crypto users. As a very happy Brave user, it was a no-brainer to prioritize the conscious integration of Brave Wallet into our community DApp and form a partnership that will develop into a strong bond,” said Samus Elderg, Spartan Protocol ecosystem contributor.

Velodrome
Velodrome is a leading decentralized exchange and liquidity marketplace on Optimism. Using a vote-escrow token design and built-in bribe system, Velodrome offers a capital-efficient, sustainable model for protocols on Optimism to attract and retain liquidity for low slippage trading. Velodrome is the next evolution of Solidly, a protocol first introduced by Andre Cronje.

“The Brave ecosystem is paving the way for wide-scale DeFi adoption by prioritizing security, privacy, and user experience in every application. For Velodrome, integrating the best tools, such as Brave’s wallet, is a key part of making deep liquidity accessible to all ecosystem players.” said the Velodrome team.

XY Finance
XY Finance is a cross-chain solution provider delivering optimal routes across multiple blockchains, covering diverse cryptos and creating ultra-fast transfers. XY Finance provides cutting-edge SDKs & APIs for token swaps and a turnkey dynamic NFT infrastructure, spanning DeFi, NFTs, and Web3. XY Finance is friendly for developers, and easy for all.

“We’re thrilled to integrate Brave Wallet to lower Brave users’ threshold of traveling in the multi-chain world. We will bring users a seamless and efficient experience in bridging crypto across multi-chain,” said Wilson Huang, Founder/CEO at XY Finance.

About Brave Wallet

Brave Wallet is the first browser-native crypto wallet, and your built-in passport to Web3. Brave Wallet enables Brave users to store, manage, grow, and swap their crypto portfolio from a single wallet. Unlike most crypto wallets, Brave Wallet does not require extensions; it’s browser-native, reducing security risks and reliance on extra CPU and memory. Users can transact with almost any crypto asset with superior safety and performance, as well as connect with other wallets and Web3 DApps. Brave Wallet is available on desktop and mobile. Download Brave today, and explore all that our new partners have to offer in Web3.

https://brave.com/august-wallet-partners/

[dshade]

thanks

[stockvaper]

Brave Improves Privacy for iPhone Users

https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/271054/brave-improves-privacy-for-iphone-users

[stockvaper]

The Fastest Browsers For Your PC Or Mobile Device

Brave

"While Brave is known to keep users private and anonymous, it’s a fast browser too. It’s not as fast as Chrome, Edge, or Opera, but it outperforms competitors like Firefox and Vivaldi. Brave scores excellent marks in running JavaScript and overall responsiveness.

Even with higher loads, Brave doesn’t slow down or show latency. It uses less RAM than Chrome, which is a huge plus if you prefer multitasking.

By default, the Brave browser blocks trackers, ads, and cookies. This feature keeps your browsing habits and preferences private. However, it’s customizable according to your needs because some websites require pop-ups to function.

Additionally, some of Brave’s features are only available as extensions on other browsers, like the built-in crypto wallet and Tor browser. For users unfamiliar with the latter, Tor is an anonymous browser that masks your identity as you use the internet.

As a Chromium-based browser, Brave is compatible with many Chrome extensions. However, you might only need a few extensions with active ad-blockers and tracker blockers. This decision helps prevent excessive resource usage."

https://www.alphr.com/fastest-browsers/

[stockvaper]

Browser Market Share Worldwide

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

[dshade]

yep. nice stats

[stockvaper]

Brave Browser above 60M MAU in June 2022:

Month, Daily Active Users, Monthly Active Users

2022-06, 19.2 Million, 62.4 Million


https://bravebat.info/brave_browser_active_users

[Investors3]

Brave Search passes 2.5 billion queries in its first year, and debuts Goggles feature that allows users to choose their own search rankings

Private, independent search engine exits beta phase on its first anniversary, with innovative features that help users de-Google their search

One year ago, we launched Brave Search to give everyone online a real choice over Big Tech: a privacy-protecting, unbiased alternative to Google and Bing, and a truly independent alternative to providers—such as DuckDuckGo or Startpage—that rely on Big Tech to run.

Today, Brave Search is exiting its beta phase. It’s the default search engine for most new Brave browser users, and any user can search privately using Brave Search in their favorite browser by going to search.brave.com. It’s had rapid user growth, released a slew of innovative features, and challenged the Big Tech monopolies head on. All while staying true to core principles:

* Independence: We serve results from our own built-from-scratch index of the Web
* Privacy: We don’t track you, your searches, or your clicks
* User-first: We put you first, not the advertising or data industries
* Transparency: We don’t censor, bias, filter, or downrank results (unless legally required to)
* Seamlessness: Brave can offer a best-in-class integration between the browser and search—from personalization to instant results as you type—without compromising privacy

To celebrate this one-year anniversary, we’d like to take a moment to highlight growth, give a sneak peek of Goggles, and review other innovative features of Brave Search.

Unparalleled growth

Brave Search has grown faster than any search provider since Bing. Some numbers:

* 2.5 billion queries in the past 365 days
* A high of 14.1 million queries per day
* 5 billion queries annualized (projection based on current monthly totals)

For comparison, it took Google more than a year to reach 2.5 billion queries, and DuckDuckGo more than 4 years.

While we’ll never stop improving, in many regions Brave Search already has a level of quality that competes with other established search engines such as Google and Bing. Thanks to this quality, growth, new features, and continued rise in global independence scores, we’re pleased to announce that we’re removing the “beta” label from Brave Search.

“Since launching one year ago, Brave Search has prioritized independence and innovation in order to give users the privacy they deserve. The Web is changing, and our incredible growth shows that there is demand for a new player that puts users first,” said Josep M. Pujol, Chief of Search at Brave. “Today we’re releasing Goggles to alter the way search has traditionally been done and to put users in charge at last. The world is too diverse for a single ranking, so Goggles opens search ranking and filtering transparently for everyone to use, share, and improve.”

Search without limits: Goggles beta release

We’re excited to announce the long-awaited beta release of an innovative new Brave Search feature: Goggles. Goggles will enable anyone, or any community of people, to create sets of rules and filters to constrain the searchable space and / or alter the ordering of search results. Anyone could then choose to apply a Goggle—or extend it—to their view of Brave Search results. Essentially, Goggles will act as a re-ranking option on top of the Brave Search index.

This means that, instead of a single ranking, Brave Search can offer an almost limitless number of ranking options, enabling search use-cases that could be too specific for a general purpose search engine. While Brave Search doesn’t have editorial biases, all search engines have some level of intrinsic bias. Goggles allows for users to counter any intrinsic biases in the algorithm.

Brave Search is committed to openness in search. It does not manipulate its algorithm to bias, filter, or down-rank results (unless it’s compelled by law to do so). Contrast this with the world’s two largest search providers—Google and Bing—who openly manipulate their rankings based on political leanings or other factors.

Goggles takes this commitment to openness a step further by allowing users to choose, alter, or extend the ranking of Brave Search results. In the sample query “search engine” below, you’ll see the power of Goggles in action. You can see that a simple query that would normally favor more common news outlets instead here shows results from individual bloggers.

Goggles can work much the same way for any topic, any media, any website. With Goggles, users can search without Big Tech’s bias—they can search without limits.

* To get started with the Goggles beta, simply conduct a search at search.brave.com and click the Goggles tab on the results page.

* Anybody can make Goggles, use ones created by others, and see the source code for already existing Goggles—and extend it—by visiting the Github repository.

* Read the full Goggles white paper.

* The Goggles available at launch (listed below) are demos, created by Brave for educational purposes only, and to showcase the Goggles' syntax and their simplicity. They’re meant as examples so users can understand the impact and potential for new Goggles, and developers can extend or fork them. Brave will not actively maintain or extend those Goggles, and will delete these specific Goggles once the community has begun building their own.

* Tech blogs—Rerank results to boost content found on technical blogs.

* Hacker News—Prioritizes domains popular with the Hacker News community, minus those that would rank among the top 1000 most-viewed websites.

* No Pinterest—Rerank results to remove pages / threads hosted on Pinterest.

* Rust programming—Rerank results to boost content related to the Rust programming language.

* Copycats removal—Rerank results to remove “copycat” content (e.g. StackOverflow threads or GitHub translations).

* 1k short—Rerank results to remove pages found on the top 1,000 most-viewed websites.

* The lists of tech blogs are drawn from multiple sources, including blogsurf.io and refined.blog, and not vetted by Brave. The list of top sites in the “1k short” Goggle are drawn from tranco-list.eu. Newly up-ranked sites are not vetted by Brave.

* Community engagement with Goggles has already started. The team at Allsides has built Goggles based on their knowledge of political biases in the media. Note that Brave is not affiliated with any of the Goggles' independent creators.

* Left-leaning sources—Rerank results to boost content from left-leaning sources.
* Right-leaning sources—Rerank results to boost content from right-leaning
sources.

Discussions

Brave Search isn’t just about offering a newer, more private alternative to the same old search. We’re also adding brand new features to improve search results.

In addition to Goggles, in April, 2022 we announced Discussions. With Discussions, search results on Brave Search are augmented with actual conversations related to the query, pulled from popular forum sites including Reddit. This allows users to easily see what various communities are saying about a topic, rather than just reading content curated by websites.

Discussions bring multiple points of view to search, and a readymade method—upvotes and likes—to measure an answer’s quality. They also allow Brave Search to combat the so-called “SEO spam” that’s become so prominent on Google. Brave Search is already better than other search engines at handling SEO content—with Discussions, we’re enhancing results even more to bring real human conversations (and answers) right to the search results page.

How we’ve grown

Of course privacy, independence, and innovation are nice. But search lives and dies on accuracy. From the beginning, we set out to build a search engine that delivers the quality, nuance, and depth that people expect from Google or Bing. And we set ourselves that mission all while committing to stay true to our principles.

So Brave Search then became an enormous engineering challenge: How to build the index—and the ranking algorithm—without collecting user data? We came up with a handful of ways:

* The Web Discovery Project: A privacy-preserving way for users to anonymously contribute browsing data, and thus improve the coverage and quality of Brave Search.
* Fallback mixing: An anonymous way for Brave to check Google in cases where our index isn’t complete or refined enough (especially for “long-tail” queries), and “mix” the results for you.
* Anonymous local results: A way for Brave Search to serve localized search results (e.g. for the query “restaurants near me”) without knowing your physical location or broadcasting your IP address.
* Listening to your feedback: We have a strong community of Brave Search users who provide feedback, requests, and suggestions on everything from results, features, infoboxes and widgets, and more. And we act on as much of this feedback as we can.

Independence scores

Together, the above show it is possible to thread the needle: to both improve the index for all users, and preserve their privacy and anonymity online. In addition to the rapid growth Brave has seen, we’re also checking another metric to measure the success of this mission: the independence score.

In isolation, this score—shown for both individuals and users globally—is a measure of the percentage of our results served directly from the Brave Search index. But it also does something much more important: It ensures free access to information, without Big Tech’s manipulation. Search engines that depend too much, or exclusively, on Big Tech are subject to their censorship, biases, and editorial decisions. The Web needs multiple search providers—without choice there’s no freedom.

Brave is building an alternative to what already exists, not window dressing the same old thing.

* The global independence score for all Brave Search users is 92%
* This is up from 87% when Brave Search first launched one year ago

Let me de-Google that for you (LMDGTFY)

When Brave first acquired the Tailcat team and began to lay the foundation for Brave Search, we knew what we were up against: The monolith of Google. It was audacious enough to take on a global brand that dominates 85% of search volume and over 60% of desktop browser usage worldwide. Doing so in a way that preserved user privacy and relied on an independently built index of the Web was a huge challenge. But it was consistent with Brave’s mission of putting users first and fixing the Web.

Coupled with our privacy browser, Brave now provides the first truly viable, private browser+search alternative to the Big Tech platforms. We’re making it seamless for users to browse and search with guaranteed privacy, all while fighting the censorship and overreach of Big Tech companies. And, rather than just offer a privacy-first copy of Google, we’re continuing to innovate with features such as Discussions and Goggles.

Ever hear the phrase “Let me Google that for you?” How about letting Brave de-Google that for you instead?

https://brave.com/search-anniversary/

[stockvaper]

Forever bullish on BAT: Brave published their numbers for May 2022!

59.3 Million Users use Brave monthly, an increase of 3.8 Million users or 6.8% in 30 days.

https://blog.cryptostars.is/forever-bullish-on-bat-brave-published-their-numbers-for-may-2022-64bb6fade62b

[Investors3]

De-AMP: Cutting Out Google and Enhancing Privacy
Brave is rolling out a new feature called De-AMP, which allows Brave users to bypass Google-hosted AMP pages, and instead visit the content's publisher directly.


Protecting Against Browser-Language Fingerprinting
Brave has further strengthened its fingerprinting protections by preventing users from being identified based on preferred browser language. Starting with version 1.39, Brave randomizes how your browser informs sites of what language(s) you’ve set as default, and what fonts you have installed on your system.

https://brave.com/privacy-updates/

[dshade]

nice

[Investors3]

"Unlinkable Bouncing" for More Protection Against Bounce Tracking
By the Brave Privacy Team

This is the sixteenth post in an ongoing, regular series describing new and upcoming privacy features in Brave. This post describes work done by Software Engineer Aleksey Khoroshilov and Senior Software Engineer Ivan Efremov. This post was written by Senior Director of Privacy Peter Snyder.

Summary

Brave is shipping a new, powerful privacy-protecting feature called Unlinkable Bouncing. This feature protects your privacy by noticing when you’re about to visit a privacy harming (or otherwise suspect) website, and instead routes that visit through a new, temporary browser storage. This prevents the site from identifying you by tying your footprint to that of previous visits, but allows the site to otherwise function as normal. Essentially, each visit appears as a unique, first-time visit, thus anonymizing your digital fingerprint. This temporary storage is then deleted when you browse away from the suspect site, preventing the site from re-identifying you on future visits.

Brave currently uses Unlinkable Bouncing as an additional protection against bounce tracking, alongside Brave’s existing query parameter stripping, debouncing, and bounce-tracking interstitial features. The feature is enabled in Brave Nightly, and will be in Brave’s full release on version 1.37. Unlinkable Bouncing is the first use of a broader capability Brave is developing called “first-party ephemeral storage,” which we’ll share more about soon.

What is bounce tracking?

Bounce tracking is a way for trackers to track you even if browser-level privacy protections are in place. Privacy respecting browsers try to prevent sites from learning about your behaviors and activities on other sites. Bounce tracking attempts to circumvent these protections by gaming how your browser behaves when you browse from one site to another.

Bounce tracking injects intermediate tracking sites in the middle of your browsing. For example, if you’re on rabbits.example, and click a link to visit turtles.example, a tracker might change the URL you click on at the last moment, so that you’re actually taken to tracker.example. The injected tracking site would then learn that you’re interested in rabbits and turtles, before forwarding you to your intended, turtles.example destination. If tracker.example is able to inject itself between enough of your navigation, over time it’ll build up a detailed (and privacy-violating) profile of your interests.

How Unlinkable Bouncing protects against bounce tracking

Unlinkable Bouncing is the fourth technique Brave uses to defeat bounce tracking. This section briefly summarizes those existing features, and how Unlinkable Bouncing complements them.

1. When you enable Aggressive blocking in Brave Shields, Brave will warn you before you visit a suspected bounce-tracking site. This feature allows users to reverse navigation if they want to completely avoid the intermediate bounce tracking site. However, this is only a warning—it provides no protection to users if they still need to get to the intended destination site.

2. Brave removes known tracking related query parameters from URLs you visit. This technique is very effective in preventing popular tracking scripts (from companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) from tracking you across the web. However, it doesn’t prevent intermediate bounce-tracking sites from learning about your browsing behaviors.

3. Brave includes a debouncing feature, where Brave will try to skip an intermediate site and navigate you directly to your intended destination, if the browser detects that you’re about to visit an injected bounce-tracking site. This is a very strong protection when applied, but sometimes Brave isn’t able to determine your intended destination, based only on the URL for the intermediate tracking domain.

Unlinkable Bouncing complements these features by preventing the intermediate bounce-tracking site from learning more information about you over time. The injected site tracker.example can still learn that someone is coming from rabbits.example and going to turtles.example, but Unlinkable Bouncing prevents tracker.example from knowing it was the same person who visited yesterday.

Combined, these four protections provide the strongest protections against bounce tracking of any popular browser.

How Unlinkable Bouncing works

Unlinkable Bouncing works in the following way:

1. When navigating to a new URL, Brave checks to see if that URL is a known bounce-tracking (or otherwise harmful) site, by consulting filter lists (both crowdsourced and Brave-generated).

2. If that URL appears in a filter list, the browser checks the Trackers & ads blocked shields setting for the destination site. If that setting is Aggressive, the user is presented with a warning for whether they want to continue with the navigation, as described in a prior blog post.

3. If the user has Trackers & ads blocked in the default setting (or decides to continue with the navigation in the Aggressive setting), the browser then checks the first-party DOM storage values (cookies, localStorage, etc.) for the destination site. If the user has any existing stored values, the navigation continues using the existing stored values (in other words, Unlinkable Bouncing is not applied). If no DOM storage values exist for the destination site, the browser creates a new, temporary browser storage area for the destination site.

4. Soon after you leave the suspected bounce-tracking site (meaning no tabs are open for that site) the temporary storage is deleted, preventing the site from re-identifying you the next time you’re bounced through the site.

First-party ephemeral storage: building on Unlinkable Bouncing

Unlinkable Bouncing is Brave’s first application of a new, powerful capability we’re developing, called “first-party ephemeral storage.” This is a set of techniques that allow sites to remember (or identify) you only for as long as you’re visiting the site. It’s similar to—though more powerful and user-friendly than—clearing your browser storage every time you leave a site.

First-party ephemeral storage builds on Brave’s existing protections against third-party tracking. Currently Brave uses a unique system for protecting against third-party tracking called ephemeral third party storage, where all third-party storage on a site is cleared when you leave the first-party site embedding those third parties. Effectively, first parties could remember you across site visits (e.g., you would stay logged into the site you visited), but third parties wouldn’t be able to. This policy for managing third-party state is unique to Brave, and is the most restrictive—and privacy-protecting—of any browser.

First-party ephemeral storage takes things one step further, and prevents the first-party site from re-identifying you: sites will be able to remember you across visits only if you want them to. This brings about a total shift in the Web’s default behavior: to date, browsers have assumed users want every site to remember them unless the user takes some explicit step against that remembering. Instead, Brave is working toward forgetfulness (and thus privacy) by default.

Unlinkable Bouncing is just the first application of our first-party ephemeral storage plans, and we’re excited to share more features with Brave users soon.

https://brave.com/privacy-updates/16-unlinkable-bouncing/

[Investors3]

Announcing bitFlyer integration for Brave Rewards Android Users in Japan, and major Brave Rewards UI/UX updates on Android
February 9, 2022 | Announcements

Today, we are excited to announce the expansion of our partnership with bitFlyer for our Brave Rewards users on Android in Japan. Verifying Brave Rewards with bitFlyer allows Brave users in Japan to withdraw BAT they earn by opting in to view privacy-preserving Brave Ads, and also to add funds, as well as to send tips directly from their bitFlyer accounts to Creators who’ve also linked a bitFlyer account to their channels on their Android devices. Users can begin by updating their Brave browser app on Android to version 1.35.x.

In addition to the bitFlyer integration in v1.35.x of Brave, users will also notice major updates to the overall Brave Rewards interface and user experience on Android.

As the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Japan, today’s bitFlyer integration will give users more control over their Brave Rewards experience. We’re excited to bring this feature to our Android users in addition to our desktop integration, and believe this integration with bitFlyer signifies another important step forward for BAT and the Brave Rewards platform internationally.

You can also read our announcement for Japanese users.

https://brave.com/bitflyer-on-android/

[Investors3]

Brave welcomes Annie Lee to its leadership team as its first Chief Marketing Officer
January 27, 2022 | Announcements

Brave is excited to announce that Annie Lee has joined the company as its first Chief Marketing Officer. Annie reports to Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO, and is responsible for marketing, advertising, branding, and creative. She was most recently at Twitch, an Amazon subsidiary.

Annie joins Brave’s 160-member team as Brave recently passed 50 million monthly active users, doubling every year for the 5th year in a row. With several new products such as Brave Search, Brave Talk, and Brave Wallet launched this past year and more in development, Annie’s expertise will be critical to growing the company.

“Annie is passionate about helping early stage companies scale marketing efforts during their hyper-growth stage,” said Brendan Eich. “We’re looking forward to expanding our product reach and ecosystem with Annie’s leadership, further engaging with our users, creators, and partners as we aim to pass 100 million users in the coming year.”

“I’m thrilled to join Brave to share a faster and safer Internet with the world. Privacy will inevitably change the Web for both consumers and advertisers, for the better,” said Annie Lee. “Brave plays a critical role in telling the story of our future by making the benefits of Web3 and crypto accessible to everyone.”

Annie brings 17 years of experience in consumer marketing and online advertising across various tech companies. Most recently, she was the Senior Director of Product Marketing and Revenue Growth at Twitch (an Amazon subsidiary), focused on helping streamers build their communities and monetize through live streaming. Her team drove marketing initiatives to support Creator, Viewer, Commerce, Ads, Music, Revenue Growth, and Trust & Safety products, while also working with brands and game publishers to develop innovative partnership opportunities on Twitch.

Prior to Twitch, she launched Amazon’s private label brands within the Health & Wellness category and led the Brand & Acquisition marketing team at AmazonFresh.

During her time as Head of Marketing at EatWith, she led the global marketing and community team responsible for driving supply and demand for their communal dining marketplace. Before EatWith was acquired, Annie helped launch strategic partnerships with MasterChef and TripAdvisor to boost the number of hosts and guests on their platform.

Previous to EatWith, Annie was an early employee and the first marketing hire at Pinterest. From under 20 million to over 100 million users, she helped shape product marketing and content marketing functions during her tenure—including GTM for product launches, editorial marketing programs, and seasonal campaigns in partnership with brands.

Before transitioning into the B2C world, Annie’s career began at Microsoft Advertising. She onboarded their earliest search clients onto Microsoft adCenter, managed display operations for MSN, and supported SMB marketing initiatives.

Originally from the Big Island of Hawaii, Annie now splits her time between Seattle and San Francisco. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, while actively advocating for parents and DEI in the workplace. Annie earned a Master’s of Communication in Digital Media from University of Washington, and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Marketing from Seattle University, where she served as an Adjunct Professor for Marketing Analytics.

Follow Annie at @anniekatrina on Twitter.

If you are interested in joining Brave, please check out our open positions.

About Brave

Brave Software’s fast, privacy-oriented browser, combined with its blockchain-based digital advertising platform, is reinventing the Web for users, publishers, and advertisers. Users get a private, speedier web experience with much longer battery life, publishers increase their revenue share, and advertisers achieve better conversion. Users can opt into privacy-respecting ads that reward them with the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a frequent flyer-like token they can redeem or use to tip or contribute to publishers and other content creators. The Brave solution is a win-win for everyone who has a stake in the open Web and who is weary of giving up privacy and revenue to the ad-tech intermediaries. Brave currently has over 50 million monthly active users and 1.3 million Verified Publishers. Brave Software was co-founded by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla (Firefox), and Brian Bondy, formerly of Khan Academy and Mozilla.

For more information, visit brave.com or follow the company on Twitter @brave.

https://brave.com/welcome-annie/

[kairos]

grabbed a bunch this mornin' ... I was hoping for this dip

[Investors3]

Brave Passes 50 Million Monthly Active Users, Growing 2x for the Fifth Year in a Row
Jan 5, 2022

For the fifth year in a row, we’ve doubled the number of our monthly active users, going from 24 million MAU on December 31st, 2020, to over 50 million by the end of 2021.

* Key new products from Brave this year included Brave Search, Brave
Wallet, Brave Talk, and, for iOS, Brave Playlist.

* Brave’s partnerships included new features or projects with Solana,
Gemini, Binance Smart Chain, IPFS, Unstoppable Domains, bitFlyer, Epic
Games, Gala Games, and Splinterlands.

For the fifth year in a row, we’ve doubled the number of our monthly active users, going from 24 million MAU on December 31st, 2020, to over 50 million by the end of 2021. We also ended the year with over 15.5 million daily active users (high water mark). Users all over the world are looking for a private, safe, and faster browsing experience, along with tools that give them independence from Big Tech. This long term and sustainable growth reflects that user desire.

The Brave ecosystem of course is not defined solely by our MAU count. Other key metrics include:

*Search queries: 2.3 billion queries annualized (went from 0 to 190 million queries a month in less than 6 months, from public access in late June to December 2021).
* 1.3 million Verified Creators, up 30% this year across YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, and more.
* Brave’s ad platform, where users earn BAT by opting in to view privacy-preserving Brave Ads (70% of ad revenue share), has greatly expanded as revenue has grown 4x over the past 12 months.
* Over 8 million users earning BAT via Brave Rewards.
* Most mobile growth of any browser in 2021 with over 10M downloads.
* Brave Ads campaigns were supported in nearly 200 countries with over 7.5 billion ad confirmation events to date. There have been over 5,000 campaigns since the inception, from nearly 900 advertisers, from mainstream brands such as Ford, PayPal, Toyota, Mastercard, Intel, Crocs, BMW, Keurig, American Express, Budweiser, Walmart, Amazon, and The Home Depot, as well as from crypto giants like Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, eToro, Gemini, and Solana.
* The average click-through rate (CTR) for a Brave Ads campaign is 8%, well above the industry average of just 2%, with many brands observing even higher engagement.
* The Brave Marketer Podcast is heading into its 4th season and has tripled its subscribers since its launch in March 2021. With over 55K unique listeners, the podcast has consistently ranked in the top 5-10% of all podcasts, and 91% of listeners convert into subscribers. Season 4 will focus on crypto marketing with guests from Crypto.com, Solana, NEAR Protocol and more.

“Passing 50 million users is a tremendous milestone for our company. It is also a powerful confirmation of the global movement underway led by users seeking alternatives to the surveillance economy,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave. “We’ve spent a successful year expanding our product range and our ecosystem, engaging with partners who share our vision for a Web free from Big Tech’s shackles. We have seen an incredible response among our users, creators, and community. We aim to double this growth again in 2022 and engage with even more users who seek a privacy-conscious way to browse the Web that rewards them instead of punishes them with tracking, and helps them directly support creators.”

Behind this momentum has been a busy year in which we’ve expanded the capabilities, products, and partnerships aimed at supporting the Brave community.

Q1

In January we integrated IPFS, the peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the Web faster, safer, and more open, into the Brave desktop browser, enabling users to seamlessly browse the decentralized web.

In February we also shared the BAT Roadmap 2.0, which laid out our direction and goals for the token for the next 12-18 months. This roadmap focused us on the Brave Wallet, the Brave DEX Aggregator, our Themis research and community outreach. As part of our Themis initiative, BAT joined the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem in March, meaning BAT holders can use multiple bridges that connect Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain ecosystems to participate in the DeFi ecosystem on BSC.

In March Brave acquired Tailcat, an open search engine that eventually became the foundation of Brave Search. Brave now offers the first private alternative to Google Search and Chrome, on both mobile and desktop.

Q2

In Q2, Brave joined a number of privacy advocates in taking a stand against FLoC, Google’s proposed cookie-less ad tracking solution. FLoC would allow your browsing behavior and interests to be shared with every site you visit, and every advertiser you come into contact with—and it would do this by default. We articulated why we disable FLoC, and why FLoC is a step in the wrong direction for privacy.

Brave browser became available on the Epic Games store for Windows desktop, making it seamless for gamers and streamers to use Brave. We also announced a collaboration with Unstoppable Domains, enabling native browser support for the crypto domain name company’s 30,000 decentralized websites and 700,000 blockchain domain names.

Brave Search, already live for months in a closed beta, became the default search engine in the Brave browser, giving online users a new, independent search option, and unmatched privacy. Brave Search uses its own index and ensures fully anonymous search. It’s also transparent in how search results are ranked.

Q3

In the third quarter of this year we launched Brave Talk, a new privacy-focused video conferencing feature built directly into the Brave browser that enables unlimited video calls without sacrificing privacy. Video calling is now an important tool for work, school, and social activities, and Brave Talk allows users to collaborate and connect online in a private-by-design environment. Brave Talk uses a Premium payment platform which establishes unlinkability in the way we take payment for the use of digital products.

We also introduced Private Display Ads in Brave News in Q3.

We also established a partnership with Gemini to provide an integrated custodial crypto wallet for BAT users who opt into Brave Rewards.

Q4

In the final three months of the year, Brave announced a partnership with Solana. On stage at the blockchain company’s Breakpoint event in Lisbon, Brave CEO Brendan Eich and Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko detailed how the companies will work together, bringing best-in-class wallet features for the Solana blockchain into Brave’s Web3 desktop and mobile browsers.

We also launched the Brave Wallet, a browser-native crypto wallet built into the Brave desktop and mobile browsers, giving our users a way to store, manage, grow, and swap their crypto portfolio from a single wallet. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Brave Wallet does not require extensions, which reduces security risks and reliance on extra CPU and memory.

Last but not least, our commitment to privacy and to putting the user first saw constant feature developments and research contributions throughout 2021. Key privacy features included:

* Ephemeral storage
* Improved permissions lifetimes and fingerprinting coverage
* Custom filter lists
* Publishing and deploying SugarCoat
* Network state partitioning
* Debouncing

All of these features are significant practical improvements for our users, and ensure that when users browse with Brave, they are choosing the best privacy browser.

We thank each and every one of our users for helping us achieve this milestone, and cannot wait to see what’s in store for the New Year!

https://brave.com/2021-recap/

[dshade]

Steady on.

[stockvaper]

The success of web browser Brave is a bad sign for Google - here’s why

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-success-of-web-browser-brave-is-a-bad-sign-for-google-heres-why

[stockvaper]

Crypto Browser Brave Passes 50M Monthly Active Users

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/05/crypto-browser-brave-passes-50m-monthly-active-users/

[dshade]

choosing add points now before 2022

[KICK1]

$BAT Batty! Woohoo! Premium ALTseason’ing Diversify and Fly!

[stockvaper]

[stockvaper]

There seems to be a trend here.

[lakingsphan0427]

Good to see BAT is up 147% in a month..

[dshade]

all time highs

[Urocka]

HOLDING QUITE WELL DURING TOUGH TIMES, NICE TO SEE!!

[Urocka]

Thanks For Posting That! Nice To See! Let's Rock!