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Modern browsers saved front-end developers everywhere, but can these browsers save us all?
Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and (unfortunately) Internet Explorer are the most popular browsers today, and they are great. They have awesome features, sweet add-ons, and most people never give them a second thought. This post is not about those browsers, it’s about the other browsers. Browsers that can help users stay anonymous and protect their identity.

Browsers that can eliminate ads and support publishers and content creators through cryptocurrency micropayments. Browsers using new protocols that promise a truly decentralized internet. Browsers that double as cryptocurrency wallets and connect users to what the, perhaps too optimistic call “web 3.0.

” Coming up are four browsers that may change the way we think about the internet. Brave Browser: The micropayments experiment
The Brave Browser (for Desktop) has a bunch of cool features. Brave is a micropayments platform using their own ERC20 token ( BATs ), it is an ad blocker, and it allows users to browse using Tor private tabs. I haven’t made a complete switch to this browser only because the front-end developing experience isn’t as good as Chrome’s, a very web-engineer-specific reason. Brave claims to have given me 1.6 hours of my life back.

Cool
Brave’s ad and tracker blocker is part of their mission to deliver web pages faster and more securely. Ads and trackers slow down web pages and create data leaks. Our data team may kill me for saying this but, a large chunk of the data we download on the web is totally useless; it’s tracking codes and ads. This costs users money when not connected to a wifi network on their phones and slows down their experience no matter how they browse. Eliminating ads and trackers immediately improves the web browsing experience.
Brave understands that publishers need to make money somehow and that’s where their micropayments platform steps in to fill the gap the ad-blocking creates. Viget’s own blog is set up as a Brave Publisher , so if you are browsing with Brave you can add viget.

com as one of the publishers you contribute your made up internet money to. This system isn’t without its problems. Setting up a wallet and getting on-boarded had the type of friction you’d expect from any crypto project.

The wallet system they’ve chosen is somewhat centralized right now.

Finally, getting people to actually use this will be difficult. Brave has been airdropping BATs to users to bootstrap the network. So far, so good, but it’s still too early to tell if this brave new way of monetizing content will work.

This diagram shows how BATs flow from users to publishers in the Brave browser
Micropayments aren’t all Brave has to offer though. Private tabs in traditional browsers can hardly be called “private.” Brave changes that by adding private tabs using Tor (The onion router). With Tor tabs you get improved security and privacy while browsing, this is what a “private tab” is supposed to be.

This feature of Brave is really exciting and one of the reasons I am a fan. For those who are not familiar with Tor, stick around, we’ll get there. It’s important to know that Tor tabs are in beta, and if you are a dissident in a dangerous part of the world you should be using something safer.
The biggest downside to using Brave has been its performance. It was bad, but it has improved . Brave is a new browser built on Muon (a fork of Electron ), so I would expect it to not be fully optimized yet; after all, I am told Electron makes it very easy to drain resources. During a recent presentation Brendan Eich, Brave’s founder and creator of the JavaScript language, talked about the reason for tech decisions as well as giving an in-depth look at what is next for Brave. Tor Browser: Not just for illegal stuff
The Tor browser bundles up security features to give users a more private and secure experience on the web.

Some may think that Tor is for people trying to surf the dark web and buy all sorts of illegal stuff paid for with bitcoin, and they are partly right. Maybe don’t do that, since that’s illegal.

Tor works by hiding you amongst all other users in the network. When a user makes a request to a server via Tor, the request is encrypted multiple times and a path through multiple Tor nodes is determined. Each node peels a layer of encryption from the original request and routes it to the next node, hence the name Tor (The onion router.) This goes on until the request reaches an exit node. The exit node will make an unencrypted request to the server and then the process will repeat in reverse through a different path of Tor nodes.
People who’d like to browse the internet without being tracked can do so with Tor.

Journalists use Tor to receive communications through Secure Drop , a system publications can set up that requires the use of Tor onion services . Non governmental organization (NGO) workers use Tor to connect to their home website without giving away that they work for that NGO. Dissidents in dangerous parts of the world can view censored content. Various government agencies have even helped fund Tor . They can use Tor to make sure not to leave behind government IP addresses while surveilling websites. Anyone who wants to anonymise their traffic for any reason can do so with Tor. The New York Times onion service (