A storm of problems for the Brave browser that had to deal with a fork that led to the birth of a new tool: Braver.
https://twitter.com/BraverBrowser/status/1270139672270946305
It all originated from something that apparently seemed harmless, a simple referral link, but which aroused the outrage of a good part of the community and the developers themselves.
The dynamics of the events that led to this situation dates back to a few days ago when users realized that by typing some addresses related to the crypto and blockchain sector, such as Binance or Ledger, and pressing send, they were redirected to the relevant page with the referral link included. Essentially, any operation carried out by the user would have allowed the browser to receive a reward.
Brave’s apology came a few days after the misdeed, with a tweet explaining what had happened. They said the problem involved adding the affiliate link completion as the first option, rather than being shown as one of the options, so typing a URL should have shown both the referral link and the link without it.
In addition, the Brave browser itself allows disabling this feature, i.e. suggesting sites for autocompletion of addresses, so the assumption of code error is somewhat mistaken and shows how the browser itself has never acted against the users or took advantage of their naivety.
So, are we in front of a happy ending?
Unfortunately not, because a handful of developers jumped at the chance to completely fork the browser from this function, going well beyond. They have eliminated almost everything, in particular:
- The rewards system, in fact the main browser allows earning BAT tokens simply by watching ads chosen by the user, an option that is disabled by default;
- Brave Together, a completely free video calling system;
- Branded wallpapers, much appreciated by the community;
- All sponsored components, including the famous wallpapers;
- The BAT icon;
- All future advertising integrations.
This browser takes the name Braver: it is a traditional browser without any utility for the end-user, devoid of what the Brave browser had created that allowed its millions of users all over the world to actively earn money while surfing the internet, without passively suffering both the loss and the improper use of data.
Fork for the Brave browser, this is not the first time
Brave was also forked over a year ago, under the name of Gab, but in that case, only the monetization system was changed, which shifted from the BAT token to the more renowned Bitcoin (BTC) thanks to the integration of Lightning Network (LN).
Despite the internal attack suffered by the browser, the BAT token was not affected by the backlash and since mid-March it continues to record significant values, currently being traded at about $0.25.
