AMA with Joel Reis and Sergey Zhukovsky

Joel: Well on iOS it is most certainly Apple's default browser restrictions. Not allowing users to set a default browser other than Safari is saddening to me. Generally speaking, I think it is partially familiarity and partly fatigue or skepticism of sorts. People are often resistant to “new”, which is honestly understandable. Technology changes so blazing fast, many users like to wait and see if things stick around. In our case, if Brave is “for real”. We are growing, and the future looks bright. I believe when people start seeing that we have a deep investment in them and truly desire to give them more control over their online footprint, adoption will start to solve itself (e.g. word to mouth as a key area of adoption).

That being said, we are constantly invested in increasing adoption, improving our message, educating users, and expanding our functionality. We are not passively waiting for a magic cat to slide in on a rainbow, although, that’d be pretty cool and probably trend well. 🌈😸

For a third. Maybe a few key features that we need to land. Syncing data between platforms is a big one. However, this is point should be outdated very soon 😉

I’m not sure if I gave you the “biggest”, but those are the ones I wanted to talk about 😆

What do you think are some of our biggest limiting factors?

Joel: Mostly just different. iOS is a bit of a black sheep here, since Android and Desktop are both built on Chromium. Thankfully we have a common, shared library we can utilize, however, user attention measuring and some of those things will need to be rebuilt in iOS. We have recently started putting in some serious effort on this, and are excited to see this Brave Rewards come together on mobile.

Joel: I really enjoy the team here. Lots of experience and knowledge to go around. Passionate coworkers who truly care about Brave and increasing security and privacy for our users. I think many of us are eager to see a control shift that gives normal people more control over their information. Brave is playing a part in this story, and I’m glad to play a role in Brave’s part.

Also, my boss drinks coffee like a machine, so that’s kind of fun. Engineering teams being highly distributed is delightful. My 3 closest coworkers all live in different countries from myself, which increases general working flexibility. I have a job I adore and also a personal life to live.

About favorite functionality. I think I am honestly most excited about the future. Brave Rewards, syncing between platforms, and a few other surprises, then I am anything I have previously helped build.

Joel: Nope, in fact, the user is even anonymous to Brave! The workflow is slightly different on each platform, but no personal identifiable information is ever given to a publisher, and Brave also does not know who you are either. No user-unique codes/IDs are utilized for ads, or referrals.

Joel: tl;dr: Pubs ❤️💰

Publishers are always looking for new income streams, and they find paths of least resistance. Publishers are also hungry right now. I think there are many reasons for this, including difficulty scaling and monetizing ads, however just seeing a handful of our partnerships is a solid example of the mutually beneficial potential here (for users, publishers, and Brave). Partnerships with companies like Dow Jones/Market Watch, and our latest with Cheddar (and more to come), reveals the level of benefit Brave and BAT can provide to publishers.

Working with Uphold, publishers can already sell BAT for FIAT, and hopefully this process will only get smoother as time goes on.

Joel: We have had conversations about TOR, but no real work has been put into planning it out or even scheduling it. We have a lot of larger initiatives being worked on, like syncing data between platforms and Brave Rewards. TOR is an item I am excited about, it will just take a bit of time to get there.

As far as cookie controls go, fortunately, I just ate all of the cookies. You’re welcome. 🍪🍽🍪

Additionally, iOS 1.8 will include the option to block all cookies, and by default Brave currently utilizes Apple’s ITP technology (via webkit) to block invasive 3rd party cookies. Fine tuning cookie control mechanisms is something we are looking into, but there are some limitations here.

Joel: I think ETH is still the best option for us. There are some scaling considerations when dealing with micro transactions, but there are also potential solutions like payment channels. Obviously, Brave is committed to doing what we feel is best for our users, and switching to an ERC20 (from BTC), has certainly been the right choice. When dealing with blockchain tech, we definitely don’t want to be chasing unproven technology on a whim.

Like always, we are constantly monitoring what is going on though.

Joel: As u/SergGz mentioned, We’re always open to UIUX input, I would recommend popping over to our Brave Rewards community site though and creating a post there. This will facilitate a better and more full conversation about this, and will allow you to provide additional thoughts if product teams have follow up questions/thoughts.

Joel: We often attempt to keep larger product initiatives parallel, but our platforms are quite different. Android is based on Chromium, and inherit many different features from there, while iOS was originally forked from Firefox. Many smaller features our teams often work independently, to help focus on those products strengths, weaknesses, or expectations.

As far as "Play in Background", iOS has some big video improvements coming in Q2 of this year 🤞, so keep an eye out of some of those larger changes.

Joel: Drink more coffee ☕️☕️☕️☕️

This is always an ongoing battle. For Brave, we have a dedicated research team, that spends significant time investigating web technologies, fine tuning performance, blazing new trails, and identifying changes in trends. They have been very helpful in helping improve ad-blocking on iOS, by web crawlers to identify ad-blocking rules we can exclude, and are currently building out technology to drastically improve web performance via SpeedReader (/speed-reader/).

On a more personal level, I find keeping up with just the cryptocurrency space (or even subcategories like cryptocurrency-economics) is pretty much unfeasible. I find one the best ways for me, is talking with knowledgeable people, preferably while drinking coffee. These people can often sift through the noise for me (even without knowing it), and often focus on the bigger items. I will occasionally attempt to drill into something specific (e.g. lightning network) and spend substantial time understanding the intricacies and sides. Like anything this combination gives a good breadth, while proving depth in specific areas.