00:00:00This is the story of a browser that pays you for browsing the internet. A browser that blocks all
00:00:05the ads, trackers, and pop-ups for you so that you can see a video of a dog using a bazooka without
00:00:11getting distracted. This is the story of Brave. In this video, we will see the entire history of
00:00:17Brave and how a browser filled with controversies is being loved by millions of people. To understand
00:00:22Brave, we need to first talk about who built it. In 2015, Brave was founded by Brendan Eich and
00:00:28Brian Bondi. Brian Bondi was a co-founder and CTO at Mozilla. But Brendan Eich is a legend. He's
00:00:35the creator of JavaScript, the language that runs most of the modern web. He was also a co-founder,
00:00:41CTO, and CEO of Mozilla. But in 2014, Brendan faced a huge controversy after his past support
00:00:49for California's Proposition 8, which opposed same-sex marriage. The backlash was intense,
00:00:54and he was forced to leave Mozilla. After that, Brendan took a step back. He was deeply committed
00:01:00to open-source ideals. But he saw that browsers like Chrome and others were collecting massive
00:01:05amounts of data, and users had zero control. Brendan believed browsers should work for users,
00:01:11not advertisers. Brian Bondi also shared the same vision. So, in 2015, they reunited and launched
00:01:18Brave Software. They raised $2.5 million in seed funding with a bold promise. Brave will block
00:01:25trackers by default, load pages faster, stay open-source, and never sell user data. And with
00:01:31that objective, in 2016, the first version of Brave was released. But the real twist was yet to come.
00:01:38In 2017, Brave introduced the idea that changed everything. They introduced BAT. It stands for
00:01:45Basic Attention Token. So, it is like a digital token used by the Brave browser to reward users,
00:01:51creators, and advertisers. It is designed to fix the broken ad economy. So, picture this.
00:01:57Big companies track everything you do on your browser. They sell your information to make
00:02:02billions, while the people actually making the content barely get paid,
00:02:06and the users don't get anything for their attention. But with the Brave browser,
00:02:10no one tracks what you do. You get BAT tokens for the time you spend watching ads,
00:02:14and more money goes directly to the people making the videos or articles you love.
00:02:19So, it's a whole different system, and it's one of the reasons what made the Brave browser popular.
00:02:24So, in 2017, they launched an ICO and raised $35 million in just 30 seconds as people from
00:02:31all over the world rushed to support the project. ICO is like an IPO, but it's for cryptocurrency
00:02:37rather than stock. The real growth of Brave was seen in 2018 when they decided to ditch
00:02:43their custom engine and switch to Chromium. If you're not familiar with Chromium, it is an
00:02:47open-source web browser project that powers popular browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge,
00:02:53and Opera. By switching to Chromium, Brave got a faster, more secure, and more compatible browser
00:02:59that could run most websites and Chrome extensions smoothly. So, because of this, Brave crossed around
00:03:053 million active users, and it was still in an experimental phase. It was in 2019 that they
00:03:11finally launched Brave 1.0, a stable version. So, that's a little backstory and growth story of
00:03:17Brave. So, let's finally talk about the controversies around Brave. Their first was in 2016, the ad
00:03:23replacement controversy. When Brave first launched, it blocked website ads and planned to replace them
00:03:30with its own ads without asking website owners. Publishers were furious, and major media groups
00:03:36accused Brave of stealing their ad revenue and even sent legal warnings. The next one was in 2018.
00:03:42YouTubers got donations they never approved. YouTubers like Tom Scott noticed something strange.
00:03:48Brave was asking users to tip creators even if those creators never signed up. Creators felt
00:03:54uncomfortable seeing "money" collected in their name. Brave changed its system so creators now
00:03:59must participate voluntarily to receive tips from users. The next controversy was in 2020.
00:04:06Affiliate link injection drama. Brave was caught automatically adding its referral codes
00:04:11to crypto websites like Binance. When users typed binance.com, Brave quietly changed and added their
00:04:18affiliate link. The company's CEO apologized and promised that there would be no more links like
00:04:23this. The next controversy was in 2021. Tor privacy leak. Tor is a feature that allows users to route
00:04:30traffic for the Tor network to hide their IP address and bypass geo-restrictions. Brave also
00:04:36offers Tor browsing for extra privacy. But researchers found that Brave's Tor tabs were
00:04:42leaking DNS requests to internet providers, meaning users weren't as anonymous as expected. Brave fixed
00:04:48the issue quickly and said it happened because of how Tor and ad blocking interacted. The next
00:04:54controversy was bundling and scraping claims in 2022. Brave bundled its paid VPN and firewall
00:05:02features into Windows installs. They were turned off unless you paid, but some users didn't like
00:05:07seeing paid tools pre-installed. Brave was also accused of secretly scraping websites for data
00:05:12resale, but Brave denied this, saying it follows website rules, no raw data is sold, and data
00:05:19is only used for APIs and services. So these are some major controversies around Brave, but still
00:05:25people love it. So that's the story of Brave. Some people love it and some people don't. But we can't
00:05:31deny the fact that Brave forced the internet to rethink privacy. Let me know in the comments if
00:05:37you love Brave or not. By the way, if you want to improve your development skills by building
00:05:41real-world projects like Git, Redis, or an HTTP server from scratch, check out Code Crafters.
00:05:48Link is in the description. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share, and subscribe
00:05:53for similar stories. And I'll see you in the next one.