Brave officially launches version 1.0 of its privacy-focussed web browser

Privacy-first company Brave has finally come out with version 1.0 of its web browser that was available in beta until now. The full stable version will make its way to almost all the platforms including Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. It’s based on Google’s open-source Chromium project.

Blocking trackers on web browsers is something several mainstream browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox are making an effort to implement. Apple’s Safari blocks all third-party trackers whereas Firefox blocks some trackers by default. Google is yet to launch the feature while Edge is still testing it.

Brave goes a step further by blocking third-party trackers, ads, autoplay videos and more, by default. You can customise the settings but everything is done by default, so you don’t have to worry about fiddling with the settings if you aren’t an advanced user.

While ad-blockers make the user’s experience better, it does harm the revenue of publishers and websites. In order to tackle this issue, the browser introduced a new advertising model called Brave Ads that will reward its users for clicking on ads. It will let users earn up to 70 percent of the ad revenue whereas the remaining 30 percent goes to Brave. The payment will be given out in the form of cryptocurrency tokens called  Basic Attention Token or BAT . It’s based on the Ethereum blockchain. At the end of the monthly cycle, all the tokens are collected as  Brave Rewards  that can be either claimed or donated to the user’s most visited sites or sent as tips to content creators.