The Brave and The Braver: What Lies In The Root of Brave Browser Fork

The Brave development team decided to fork their cryptocurrency-oriented browser. Enthusiasts want to create an improved version of the browser — devoid of ads, affiliate links, and even basic attention tokens (BAT) themselves. They offer to completely get rid of the “commercial component” of the browser, leaving only its “clean” version. This way, they respond to the recent scandal with the application.

Who is brave enough?

Brave is an open-source web browser the key feature of which is the ability to earn Basic Attention Token crypto by viewing ads. Brave itself blocks intrusive ads and thereby increases the speed of web surfing.

In May, the number of active browser users during the month exceeded 15 million. Also, Brave was recommended by Joe Rogan at his podcast with over a million subscribers.

Referral links incident

The reason for creating a fork called Braver was a wave of indignation in the crypto community. Users that Brave has built-in referral links leading to cryptocurrency exchange sites or wallets. This fact runs counter to the motto of the Brave developers — no hidden advertising.

The developers of the browser recognized the problem of referral links in Brave: on June 9, 2020 they issued an official apology for this. Programmers said they had already gotten rid of the links.

By the way, the founder of the project also emphasized that Brave really makes profit by advertising the Binance widget and attracting new users to the famous cryptocurrency exchange. However, they did not have plans to redirect user requests via a regular link.

The Bravest fork

At the same time, a team of independent developers announced the creation of an updated version of the Brave named Braver on Twitter. Two days later, programmers demonstrated the first test build of the software, where referral links and hidden ads were already cut out.

And here is how the developers commented on the event.

The first test build of @BraverBrowser completed a few hours after its fork, removing Brave’s referral link injection.

The full release will remove all adware:
Rewards
Brave Together
Branded Wallpapers
Sponsored Components
BAT icon
All future ad integrations pic.twitter.com/TQjJ0uc0C9

- Braver Browser (@BraverBrowser) June 8, 2020

In other words, the Braver team wants to deprive itself of all sources of income through which the original Brave browser exists now. The browser creator Brandan Eich was skeptical about this venture:

Solid points made here @BrendanEich https://t.co/CeUxW9jR2d

- brrrrr chill 🦍 (@brysonchill) June 7, 2020

The creators of the Braver browser surely have good intentions, but they hardly took care of financing their project. Programmers will not be able to “get far” on altruism alone, and relying on users’ donations does not look very viable.

Originally published at https://coinjoy.io.