Brave Browser CEO Discusses Blockchain Privacy Ads: Monthly Active Users Will Exceed 100 Million

[Coin World] This is an excerpt from The Drop news bulletin.

Brave is one of the few web browsers that embraces crypto. It has associated BAT reward tokens and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its associations. But it also takes a privacy-focused approach — and heavily promotes that in its marketing to help differentiate itself from other Chromium-based browsers.

"We are somewhat like metaphysical resistance against the large tech surveillance powers that have developed on JavaScript," said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave (who created the JavaScript language), at a conference this week. "We did not fully consider this in the mid-90s. Cookies were designed to save your login tokens," he added. "They were not intended for third-party traffic, but that is how they evolved, and JavaScript just added fuel to the fire."

Eich believes that internet advertising is essentially a "toxic system" where all parties involved "are fighting and deceiving each other." However, technologies that utilize blockchain rails, such as ZK Proofs for privacy combined with "proof of humanity" verification for fraud prevention, can help bring about a new, browser-native, more private advertising system. "We need to move towards faster blockchains that are designed with privacy in mind," he said.

Brave passed 88 million monthly active users in May 2025 (MAU). It is expected to reach 100 million in the fourth quarter. The well-known "summer slump" on desktop (school vacations, holiday travels => people going out) has begun, but overall browser + search growth remains strong. Additionally, we have seen a good growth in user engagement.

Brave was originally a web browser, as this type of product serves as a starting point with the potential to reach mainstream consumers. "It is a universal application, a daily driver. Our users spend more time on it than on certain social platforms, but the number of users is smaller," Eich said. Brave's transparency page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly active users.

Although not all Brave users like it, Brave Search is improving its LLM (Brave provides Leo AI) by using this data to assist the company's AI business. "It seems that the browser is still important, but we found that the other side of the browser coin is search," the CEO said.

Eich previously co-founded the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiaries, and worked on the Mozilla project for 11 years. He spoke on stage with Fahmi Syed, president of the Midnight Foundation (Midnight is a ZK and privacy-centric chain related to Cardano). The Midnight Foundation just launched last month and plans to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.

Last month, Brave announced that it is adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports many chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and more.

In his speech, Eich ended with some suggestions that might stop vibe-coders: rewrite your code. Then perhaps consider rewriting it again and again. "Human intelligence will not be surpassed by these [AI] models," Eich said. "Be a human, write and read code."