The cryptocurrency-powered Brave browser, founded by Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, has recently reached 4 million monthly active users, 21,000 verified channels, and 26,000 publisher accounts.
The data comes from a tweet published by Brendan Eich himself, who noted the browser’s team is set to work on integrating its basic attention token (BAT) on mobile this fall, and on surpassing 5 million monthly active users by the end of the year.
Latest @Brave stats: 4M users (MAU), 21K verified channels, 26K publisher accounts.
We will step on gas w/ brave-core + BAT on mobile this fall, get past 5M easily by EOY, >= 12M next, adding BAT ad deals to token grants, making good on the promise of @attentiontoken economics.
— BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) September 2, 2018
Next year, Eich expects Brave to have over 12 million monthly active users. At the pace the browser is growing, however, it may be well above it as in July it was at 3 million monthly active users. At the time, it had 18,000 verified publishers accepting BAT, 4,500 of which were websites and 13,500 YouTubers.
As CryptoGlobe recently covered, Brave has now been downloaded over 10 million times from Google’s Play store. The browser notably blocks ads and third-party trackers by default, and has partnered with Dow Jones earlier this year to trial BAT.
Brave has a built-in cryptocurrency wallet, in which users can manage their BAT. Through it, they can reward content creators on the web according to the attention they give them, or with an amount they specify.
The browser is also reportedly trialing its advertising program, which is set to reward users for seeing approved ads. Its users will receive 70% of the revenue from “user ads,” which are set to be “delivered directly to the user in a separate ad tab” and with 15% of the revenue from the ads that appear on websites, known as “publisher ads.”
During the trial, those who opt to see ads may see their browsing history be sent to the team anonymously, in order to help improve the system. Brave’s browser is notably privacy-focused, as it even features Tor integration and uses the privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo on incognito tabs.
The Opera browser is seemingly the only other one entering the crypto space. After seeing Bitmain invest $50 million in its IPO, it released a browser for Android with a built-in cryptocurrency wallet that supports ethereum (ETH) and decentralized applications. The cryptocurrency wallet is set to be added to its desktop browser.