In a previous article we outlined our views on the Brave browser by way of comparison with what Decentr aims to achieve, and why we feel the BAT model (and similar “reward-based”, revenue sharing models) are part of the problem and not the solution to socioeconomic reform.
Decentr’s interdisciplinary R&D has demonstrated that this solution requires a 100% decentralised and secure, user-centric solution to address the problem of incentivisation where watching ads is concerned.
The question that really needs to be addressed at the outset is, when you break it down, what is BAT actually useful for? At least what does Brave claim BAT is useful for? And does BAT and its purported “utility” hold up to scrutiny and reasoned analysis?
Brave: Commercial First, User-Centric Second?
Brave was in the past hampered by an inability to cash out its token. This has now in part been addressed by including the ability to withdraw BAT in addition to depositing. Brave Browser now has an embedded crypto-wallet; however, this is centrally managed by Uphold, a Digital money exchange which is used for regulatory compliance and ease of funding via Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or BAT transfer.
To enable withdrawals from the local Uphold.com wallet, the wallet must be verified. Users must complete Uphold.com KYC requirements to become verified, and this is done via Uphold, which isn’t available worldwide and requires KYC done on the Uphold platform. The other option is to integrate a supported hardware wallet into the Brave wallet.
From the perspective of a Web browser solution, there are security and other issues with linking to Uphold (or any third-party solution) that can make the process slow and inconvenient, further working against mainstream adoption.
Moreover, it makes it vulnerable to third-party manipulation and profiteering (even if unintentional), with Brave itself having recently been caught injecting its own affiliate codes into web addresses for popular cryptocurrency trading websites.
For example, Brave Browser auto-filled a referral code to the end of the web address when “binance.us” was typed into the address bar, which could earn Brave Software 40% from trading fees for every account created using the link.
This has since been explained by Brave as a mistake in showing the affiliate link completion as the first option, rather than being shown as one of the options, but is a prime example — where issues of privacy are concerned — of the potential inherent danger of a pseudo-decentralised system underpinned by a linear revenue model. This inherent danger immediately saw the Brave browser forked by a handful of disgruntled developers into “Braver”, eliminating almost all end-user utility in an attempt to minimise what they saw as Brave browser’s attempt to profit off unwary users while sneaking in ways of gathering data when making third-party referrals.
So it is yet to be seen in the mid- to long-term whether the Brave browser puts commercial concerns first, and privacy-centric web browser concerns second. What is for certain is Brave’s linear economic model and pseudo-private user utility features makes it decidedly likely that this will necessarily be their order of priorities.
After all, with such a model, the beast, so to speak, needs to be fed somehow and it gets increasingly less moralistic and consumer-minded about that upon which it dines.
Decentr: User-Centric First; Commercial Concerns Complementary
The Decentr browser and platform, however, takes the reverse position by default of design and deployment — simply because our tokenomics and deconomics are based on 100% decentralised and secure data having superior “value store” properties to money.
This essentially dictates that anything less than 100% secure and decentralised data could adversely affect the quality of the data and hence DEC and DDV price.
With this in mind, Decentr overcomes third-party verification by conducting KYC through DecID, as we are building a whole “decosystem” (or “decentralised ecosystem”) and we therefore do not rely on third-party solutions or exchanges to on- and off-ramp DEC or Digital Data Value (DDV). Maintaining all these features as part of one system reduces friction as it requires no specialist knowledge or intervention on the part of casual users, as it is all taken care of as a set of seamless sub-protocols on the Decentr platform.
Moreover, the Decentr browser and platform ensures that because users are not linked to a third-party wallet, three critical security issues are immutably addressed:
1. There is zero chance of a user’s identity being stolen or the information stored on their DecID being compromised;
2. There is zero chance of “bad actors” hacking user accounts, and;
3. User information is never shared with a third party (unless users give permission to do so to increase their PDV through data reuse and exchange, as part of our dFintech features).
The Deeper Problem with Advertising Itself
Security questions aside, BAT is, conceptually, little more than a “rewards” system and native token for watching ads. Troubling concerns remain as to the length and attention span of anyone who watches these ads: we need to live in the real world when inventing spurious rewards systems that seem to (on paper anyway) want to circumvent basic human nature.
Targeting reliability aside, the notion of getting paid to watch ads is a default model that is only set to produce diminishing returns over time (as we discovered when we tested similar features on Decentr, then rejected them as unworkable). How so? Because, as is common with the whole concept of advertising, especially online, it is human nature to figure out how to avoid watching ads. (There is a billion dollar industry set up to do exactly this.)
And that instinct is actually amplified when you offer payment to watch ads.
To cheat the whole advertising industry by getting rewarded for pretending to watch them whilst really folding laundry might just be the most satisfying experience ever devised by human kind.
We all know that buzz we get after 5 seconds when the two sweetest two words in the English language — “Skip Ad” — appear — well imagine that buzz being paid for. Its digital Catnip for a generation that has grown up scrolling down a web page with the volume muted for alternative content until the compulsory ad at the top has finished playing. (And that is before you figure in the billions of dollars in ad fraud perpetrated by ad bots that artificially inflate web traffic while doing zero for revenue.)
The bottom line is that a new browser, however secure and anonymous, merely isolates users in the absence of a better way to use this browser to communicate. (We call this the information sharing/storage paradox — more on that in later/earlier articles and in the whitepaper.) This explains in part the relatively sluggish user uptake of the Brave browser: 12 million active monthly users over 8 years is hardly the exponential uptake that investor dreams of startup unicorns are made of.
The reason for this sluggish user uptake is as simple as it is evident: there is simply no compelling reason for the vast majority to use the Brave browser: this is because Brave is a tool whose sales pitch is essentially based on a negative sell. Brave eliminates certain aspects of the current internet experience — aspects that a jaded public don’t find particularly deleterious anyway due to blithe acceptance, however misplaced, of the status quo.
Brave’s sales pitch is effectively akin to a white goods manufacturer pitching a new washing machine as “not catching fire and exploding in the same way as our competitors have been proven to do” and hope that improves the company’s reputation for engineering excellence, bottom line and customer experience.
What is the value-added experience on Brave? Getting a cut of ad revenue to watch ads in money that is difficult to cash out is not proving the compelling draw that Brave might have hoped.
Decentr takes all of these aspects into account. We are changing the whole ethos of online and offer users a secure, immutable experience that changes the socioeconomic game, online and offline. Decentr gives users a value-added suite of 100% decentralised features that puts them in control of both their online experience as part of a new socioeconomic paradigm — one that allows 100% user-centric control over what they discover, how they discover it and how the process of discovery delivers users economic value via their increasing data value.
No “rewards” system required: a 100% decentralised browsing experience is a payable and tradeable reward unto itself, as expressed in user-data-as-value that can be leveraged through PDV to pay less online.
We look forward to answering all your questions. Please find our official links below.
Official Links for Decentr:
Official Email Address: Admin@decentr.net
Official Website Link: https://decentr.net/
Official Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/DecentrNet
Official Telegram Announcements Channel: https://t.me/DecentrAnnouncements
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/DecentrNet
Official Medium: https://medium.com/@DecentrNet
