Brave CEO: We’re in a ‘metaphysical rebellion’ against big tech surveillance
JavaScript fueled a toxic ad model for the internet, says Brendan Eich, but crypto and privacy tech could help us escape it
Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich | Permissionless IV by Ben Solomon for Blockworks
This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.
It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins.
But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.
“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.
“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party traffic, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”
Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.”
But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.
“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he said.
Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience.
“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s transparency page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.
And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).
“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.
Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation launched just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.
Last month, Brave said it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others.
During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code.
Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.
“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
