Browser wallets and why Brave built one

Transcript

gmgm welcome to another episode of web3 Academy your trusted source for useful and legitimate web3 information so you don't fall behind the internet Revolution I'm Jaybird joined by my co-host Kyle reedhead and we believe that web3 is going to change the world that's why we're here to guide the world's top talent down the rabbit hole as you participate contribute and capitalize on the opportunity and this is episode 2 of the wallet series two of four of the wallet series if you have not listened to the first one with Ledger highly recommend you do that that came out last Monday this has just been a great Series so far and what

was interesting about this episode Jay is this was Brave Brave is actually a company that did something else before a wallet right their Brave browser which is becoming pretty big in the space I think he said it was around 60 million users use this browser and so brave has its own business and what I find is a theme of what we're talking about here in wallets and was brought up a little bit with Ledger is that applications or use cases on the internet are going to want their own native wallets because it creates better experiences for those applications and that's exactly what the journey here was with brave they already had a business and that business is doing well and they decided because they're getting into crypto and they have some token the bat token that like helps with their ecosystem but they said

hey if we want to make this experience even better the way we're going to do that is by having a native wallet and that's one of the reasons why this was born and I think that's just a really cool concept that I grasped from this conversation was just kind of like the need for it and how I think many applications are going to end up doing this because it just makes it better so that was my like big takeaway I think from this conversation it was so interesting to hear the backstory of Brave that one of the founders was one of the original creators of JavaScript and he saw that so many large browsers were monetizing off of the user's data and he really cared about privacy which is a big part of the web3 ethos we all care about decentralization leading to

privacy of our data and that was really what led him to start Brave and then fast forward he saw the issues happening with web3 wallets around security and so security became such a big issue and he was like oh wow if we create a brave wallet directly in the browser we already control the full ux and control the data then we can have a more secure experience too so yeah really fascinating to hear the story of how it led to the creation of brave but then also where does that go in the future and where do wallets lead to we'll touch on that towards the end of this episode really interesting and I think the the other takeaway that I had was kind of near the end of the episode was the

risks Associated to wallets right we got to think of like the tech risk right and we think about a lot with like apps in the app store and they have to listen to what Apple says and one of the things I learned here was like well browser extensions have to listen to what Google says right and so if you just own the browser then you don't have to worry about anymore so it actually takes away a bit of risk um so it's better for the users in terms of experience it's also better for the company in terms of Brave so that was a kind of eye-opening thing as well which I thought was quite interesting yeah so on today's episode we have Carlos Acevedo who's joining us from the brave team he's one of their leaders on the business development side Carlos has also been working as an

innovator in the web 3 space for since early crypto days he's had work featured in many Publications including the Washington Post and The New Yorker so he's widely recognized as a thought leader in the space having come from really the software background initially and now leading into the business development and the growth side so a really broad perspective that he brings to Today's show but before we jump into today's episode all about Brave and brave wallet take a minute to hear from our sponsor the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2

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excited to dive into brave but really a focus on Brave wallet today as part of our wallet series but before we jump in there you've cut a pretty funny rabbit hole story of how you first got into crypto take us back to I believe you said it was 2014 when you first got into the space that all happened I got into the space first with Dogecoin if you've been in the space long enough this is before Dogecoin was a thing like a real thing where people were like making millions on it it was a fork of Bitcoin that was made as a joke you know I was a teacher at the time in New York City and I was in there and I was play on Reddit you know I had download I was mining on my MacBook Pro and I was tipping on Reddit and like having fun and you know

we organized to donate to the Jamaican bobsled team it was hilarious we're all making jokes and I remember at that point people would imagine if this gets to one cent imagine this gets the list you know at that point it was such a joke that no one gave it any serious thought and a couple of things occurred there with Dogecoin I learned a couple of things the the first most important thing is no matter the chain or the wallet or anything else like the same organizational principles kind of apply right so with Dogecoin I had to secure a recovery phrase um I had to sync my node and to understand where the blocks were and like where the transition like I had to explain a bunch of stuff that actually helped me later when I got introduced to ethereum I had Bitcoin back then but like very little and I

always like to say that if I had a lot of Bitcoin I'd be that guy who lost his private key and you know the pizza guy or the guy who lost it in a dump whatever my big loss is that in 2016 when I you know found more respectable crypto I sold all of my Dogecoin which was quite a bit for East and Bitcoin because I thought it was more serious and that was the biggest mistake of my life financially I think I think it's safe to say I mean it couldn't have been that bad it was pretty bad it was pretty it's true you still you still got Bitcoin and eth early on obviously you didn't get the uh it's a Dogecoin but well let's go back to where this was right I mean 2017 you know that was during the prior bull market and Bitcoin

went up to 20K before it precipitously dropped 90 eath went up to 1400 before it dropped and it was all amongst that time so like right now where's at around 1500 right this is yeah true you know after 2018 so this is you know sudo has something cost at this point I have no other choice but no this is as far as I'm concerned it was the price of admission I mean this is the education aspect and it's really important even you know messing with any of these wallets anything you guys are doing it's applicable across the space and so people get very overwhelmed with crypto but it really boils down to kind of the same ideas of just keep in possession and managing private Keys okay so this is a great lead-in to talking about wallets and I know that you have taught

a wallet 101 course give us the cause notes of that course we went through a number of wallets there were about five and types of wallets not specific Brands what types of wallets that we've organized on a scale from convenience to security you know it's really applicable like you guys are be talking to other projects and you can apply that scale to all of them at the most convenient you have exchanges which I count as a wallet which really drives home the idea of not your keys not your coin because what happened right Mount gox was the first one where people really understood wait a minute I don't own anything if I don't control the private key because the blockchain doesn't care who technically owns it the blockchain only knows that

okay this amount of Bitcoin or other crypto is associated with these private keys right so very early on I learned that if I were to let's say purchase crypto on coinbase or Gemini I'm in New York so my choices are limited if I were to hold that Bitcoin or crypto Autos exchanges I am running the risk that I could lose it because if something happens as it did the Celsius for example or with Gemini earn they you have an IOU you don't own that right whereas I keep the vast majority of my crypto off of exchanges which is what people should ultimately do because part of the ethos behind this whole thing is the idea of self-sovereignty and so

taking that responsibility for your crypto is something that should be done is not always done right let's say I want to stake my teeth with Lido man I said okay I'll stick with Lido or I want to go into Ave and take out a loan well again I no longer control that right so if something happens to any of those daps if there's any kind of hack that occurs or I dodged the bullet during the Wormhole hack because I had Bridge some eth over to Solana old school solet wallet that even Wormhole wallet and so thank God jump came in and like saved it but you know at that point you understand like this isn't mine anymore and so with a convenient wallet like an exchange you are opening yourself vulnerability but at the same time

especially since 2014 crypto is growing more and more to more and more uses that it's inconvenient to keep it like in a paper wallet which was like is the most secure thing back in the day you know turn off your internet make sure your printer is off create a cache create a private key and that's where your crypto stash the story of the the WinCo boss twins that's what they did they did a bunch of air gap paper wallets they tore it in half and then flew to different banks around the country and like kept half a half and that's how they keep their one to two percent of all Bitcoin that they own like save and that's it's 100 safe like there's nothing that can happen and I think that's one of the things that ends up really exemplifying what the potential here is for just gar

targeting wealth and value in a very secure way thank you for the wall 101 that's great let's jump from there into the story of Brave and read from the story of Brave into the story of Brave wallet so maybe if you want to have the beginning brave but let's move to Bridgewater I wasn't around for the beginning of Rave my now colleagues or one of my new close colleagues Luke mulks was around and also our CBO Brian Brown and and Brenda Nike obviously on Brendan and Brian Bondi who was our CTO and co-founder so Bradley Nike he was he's the creator of JavaScript and reading his story is very interesting because you get the sense that during the time when JavaScript was created and web 1012 were coming into play they didn't predict how it would be utilized to extract value from users by using

cookies and using pixels and really allowing people to be tracked around the internet and then so Brenda and I got together with Brian Bondi and they created Brave as a concept where it is a privacy by default right your browser is really the you know beginning of your entry into utilizing the web and so rather than have it to kind of depend on expertise to install extensions with like ad blockers or anything else Brave by default will protect you when you're using the web right and so it blocks all trackers all ads all scripts it's there to really protect the user I'm on Noble and desktop and I guess the best way to exemplify a really practical use of Brave is that you can watch YouTube

without ads and matter of fact I actually pay for YouTube premium only because I have an Apple TV and I watch YouTube on Apple TV and I'm so used to not having ads that unless I make get a Raspberry Pi and create it to have Brave on there for like my TV which I haven't done yet I don't want ads right there's a situation that's created there right so if you block all Trappers and ads as this that model to this day supports the internet I mean that supports paying for a lot of what we take advantage of for a very low cost of for free right this will work kind of a crypto comes in where you know Brave creative Brave rewards with our basic attention token first we use Bitcoin but uh fees became untenable very quickly a drc20 token

came up as an opportunity and so brave data token sale in 2017 um raised 30 some odd million dollars in 30 seconds of basic attention token what's the point of doing that it was one of the larger ones and they and they really did it right I watched two I tried to participate this prior to me being at Brave I tried to participate in the token sale I was unable to I know a lot of people that did and one of the reasons why such a steadfast product is because bat has a very special place in the ecosystem of that attack right because The Guiding Light of Brave I like to say this is not an official stance but it's like user first like everything really comes from the user so you know user would take user in account by privacy and then Brave rewards which

is our ad ecosystem users opt into it right so users get to choose where they're not to see ads if you don't want to that's fine we want to create an experience that does we hope that you choose to because then if you view private preserving ads you earn basically the token and you're able to utilize that bat for different things around the web hopefully to chip your favorite content creators and Publishers this is kind of a way for us to create a revenue stream for Content creators and Link them with their audiences so that quality content creators can earn a living by getting content to their users and uses them tipping them in appreciation right and so it's kind of elegant in the sense that crypto at its

core is peer-to-peer right and so what Brave did is take that one step further in taking you know there would be the advertiser the publisher and the user and then all in here would be all of these middlemen that would extract data and this is where you know the Goliath of tech would come from Brave Cuts all that out and it tends to use this crypto but in web3 to create a direct relationship between the user the content creator and the publisher I was just gonna say and then so did the wallet I mean I don't know when the wallet was actually launched but did that come out of necessity because you had this token well everyone's using it yeah so they probably would have needed to use a different wall at that time you're like hey let's make this DX

better and we'll just well I'm around or yes and no within the brave ecosystem where we're doing a recent change now that it's called um it rewards 2.5 where you could literally Download Brave and then activate Brave rewards and then utilize that within the brave ecosystem using virtual bat and so what you're able to do is tip your favorite content creators and Publishers you can tip on Twitter um GitHub you can hold it you know you do what you want but we are a us-based company and the minute you have to try to either withdraw that bat to a self-custody wallet or to put it into an exchange we have Partners two of which are uphold in Gemini that you have to go through AML kyc to do so and so there

was always a bit of rancor amongst some people that say well Brave is supposed to be crypto but you know you guys we don't make you do ammo kyc but we are coming company and we have to follow laws regulations and so to utilize this and to participate here if you want to take it out to self-custody wallet unfortunately you have to go through that process and that's something that is a reality of the world we live in especially given today's climate around crypto so the wallet itself became one where Andre isn't zopolis which if your audience is a new to web3 and crypto Andreas is the premiere on bitcoin and web I say Bitcoin educator that's really mainly what he you know talking about mastering Bitcoin but he also wrote mastering ethereum and also a mastering

lightning Network along with some um collaborators but he also wrote a three volume series that is actually a transcript of his YouTube talks called the internet of money and he has volume one two three if there was any teacher or book that really opened my mind to the possibilities of what this all creating I mean this is what literally changed the trajectory of my life I've heard really good things from a lot of people from this yeah it really does and so to bring wallets into it Andreas and one of his talks uh and I was I used to be an English teacher what he said really kind of uh hit home he said a wallet is a terrible metaphor but while it isn't a wallet a wallet is a keychain we use the term wallet because it's more convenient it's app people can quickly understand it but in

reality nothing's capped in a wallet right your Bitcoin isn't there private keys are there it's a keychain but you're not going to say like you know keychains right that's confusing what we found that brave well two things one we have a very high standing in the web 3 world when I was on the sales side many of our advertisers were in crypto our users based upon self-reported survey data is very crypto native and so all the extension wallets that you have are generally pretty much installed in braid but like anything an extension there's a risk factor involved you have to find the extensions there's many examples of people you know finding a Google ad by Googling you know metamask and then installing a fraudulent wallet and then finding their funds stolen Brave

determine that integrating a wallet into the browser was the best solution to help protect or use users reduce friction and then allow them to take advantage of all that web3 has to offer today and tomorrow by having the wallet there already I mean we have upwards around 60 million users well 58 million something like that we keep transparent on our user numbers Brendan tweets about it every month but in all for all intents and purposes we have between 58 and 16 million wallets out there because of so many monthly attributions we have that means we have that many wallets they're not all activated yet we're trying to make as many people activate those as possible right I mean we're

doing a lot of things around that so that's why the wallet came to be in it and it's why it's very useful in a great tool to clarify for those who don't use Brave so first of all Brave this is like Google Chrome let's say except it's more user-friendly user first it's all about privacy Etc and the difference in your wallet is think of like a metamask or any other wallet they use that's an extension in your browser you guys are a very similar type of wallet to that except you're not an extension you don't have to install anything it's just already there once you have the browser right so there is no download Google Chrome then download metamask which is as you said a risk factor it's just you have Brave you have a wallet that's it right and money can flow into it or flow

out of it without having to activate anything correct correct and it's a it's an option within the browser for you to accurately unlike metamask and some or other we also don't track you so user privacy is super important to us I mean that's really our ethos and we make choices with that in mind you know Brave doesn't hold any user data there's nothing that we have on our users we don't want to um and share comments on Chrome we have a chromium base so the code base for brave is a chromium-based browser so all extensions for Chrome work ombre which makes it even easier for you to enter and so if you have been a mask installed in Brave wallet you can import it into Brave wallet you can import private keys there and it just makes things super easy right we don't have any plans

whatsoever to really create an extension or a separate app it is the browser right and so if you use everything we have together you have like a super robust video player that protect your privacy without ads you have a wallet that is self-custody that can protect your assets that you have to utilize the same protocol of writing down your recovery phrase and making sure you keep everything secure that doesn't change or else your wallet if it's a good wallet right we are in a position to capitalize as look I've seen this space come from like I said Doge and Bitcoin in 2014 where smart contracts weren't even a thing to look what everything is happening today and so that was over eight years and only imagine where it's going to go further and brave is uniquely positioned to really capitalize

on what web3 has to offer and one thing that is part of my position on Brave C is to help to create and Implement different features and chains and things like that so that users can then choose if they want to you know mention nftino Solana or if they want to take a loan out on Ave or if they want to post on lens on polygon or if they want to you know utilize file coin we're working on integrating utxos right and that opens up a huge possibility for Bitcoin the forks right so these are things that you can have a One-Stop shop for all of web 3. so brave is doing something that Jay and I always talk about and the bank list guys have talked to us a lot in

terms of D5 with the D5 mullet we also say there's the web 3 mod right where like you can start to interact with dapps and use nfts and use all this stuff but you don't have to like know that you're even interacting with a blockchain right you don't have to go and get your metamask wall and all this kind of stuff and sign these transactions Etc like eventually that all goes away I think gas fees all that goes away because the app layer pays for it or whoever but even now I mean it's pretty interesting that brave you don't need to get your browser extension or sorry your wallet extension it's just already there and then you're already crossed platform so cross blockchain like you said file coin ethereum polygon and others how does this change the ux when I'm using it so let's say I'm going

to any of these dapps do they still have to like connect a wallet sign transactions or does it eventually maybe it already does it does it eventually kind of like Get rid of a lot of that because it's more of a native experience how does that work or how is that different with metamask it still functions like a wallet and so one of my efforts during the last six months I'd say we ran a very successful wallet partner program which was adding Brave wallet as a connection option on different apps so we ran a blog post every month on it we have I think a north of 80 Partners um it's still growing and so that's one of the things I mean what you're talking about is a pie in the sky that I hope happens later I'll just talk during East Denver about a count of traction

everything that that really infers I think is super early and I think you know if anything about crypto is full of opium but yeah I think they're going there eventually you are very excited we're doing a while a 2.0 UI refresh but like all of these things are like Brave is a super attentive staff that is really aware of progress and developments in the space and we're going to try to move towards that because again we want to make everything kind of seamless and in-house in the browser and so you're part of what you said is like is going to be part of that effort and so long term will Brave wall and brave browser always be together do you think or do you think that you will spin out and have your own wallet that's separate I guess from an organizational

standpoint is the focus on the browser or is the focus on the wall because it seems like initially you started with the browser which was great opportunity but it's a totally different business model in the world it's solving a different problem I'm just curious how you guys think about that it all begins with the browser there's no plans as far as I know but my to separate and also I don't think is necessary you see some of our competitors integrating browsers into their wallets and so you know if I had to Builds on their mobile wallet I was at breakpoint and I like did the Asic they actually became a sneakers soon actually um I did that you know within the wall in this but all I'll say is that I would trust Brendan ayak and T and Brian Bondi to create a robust browser before a

wallet team that secondhand thinks about creating a browser right our wallet is there and it's part of a really robust and strong ecosystem that is going to support overall because again Brave while we have a great standing in the web 3 space we're not a strictly web free company right we are a platform that prioritizes users user privacy we have Brave talk which is our video chat that's private right encrypted we have playlist which allows you to Cache videos on YouTube so those are things that are not web3 related so like I don't want to make it seem as if the full breath of Brave is like behind the wallet it's a very important part of a full platform that will create uh really amount of opportunity for people

to you know enjoy web3 along with web 2 by being fully protected because again user first and protecting our users which is important because I think a lot of people get excited about web3 and then think that web 2 is just gone and it's like no that's not how it's gonna go they're merging together and so like we still need a browser that's still how we're going to get around the internet and so we need that and then and then your wallet's kind of like your ux to do your self-custody stuff anything with digital ownership your wallet is your ux for that and then when you want to browse the internet and you want to do all these different things like watch videos your browser is the interface for that right so like it's kind of 200 faces in one this is the way that I see

it I guess one is for your internet stuff and one is for your whatever web three stuff you're gonna do right right no matter what you're doing in web 3 it all boils down to a wallet like that's the really like Bare Bones bottom line like we strip away everything and if T is D5 staking liquid staking account abstract all those things that we have conferences over the traveling circus of crypto it really boils down to transacting with a wallet really like granule that's all it is everything is trying to be with a wallet I've been messing with um ordinals on bitcoin recently and like again it was so funny I was doing uh they did an ordinal inscription of the Bitcoin wizard from Reddit from back in the day that Bitcoin Wizard and I minted some of them and it was so funny because all these people

who came into crypto later have never used Bitcoin I've been running my own Bitcoin node for years I've been messing around lightning Network for years not always successfully but I have been trying and so when this mint utilized on both lightning and Bitcoin core um it was funny to me because I was writing in the Discord I was like I've been training for years for this because everyone's like how how do I get Bitcoin on lightning how do I do this and it was just you know what I was saying again like web 3 is all about tinkering it's all about fun too the interesting thing and this is the thing I like to ask for all wallets because I'm always curious about where this is going most of the wallets right now have been built for like erc20 fungible tokens right they've been built for

money essentially okay and it's built to exchange money but what they weren't really built for is the whole web three thing that's caught up in the last couple years nfts and all the stuff that's going on in that world right where there's actually something to view in the wallet that you hold right with a fungible token there's nothing to look at it's just maybe a logo and then like the name of it whereas nfts are something very very different where you can have experiences with them inside of games inside of metaverses and there's just so much more to it art Etc music and so wallets are going to have to adapt and be something way more than just a money wallet right and so I'm curious how or if Brave is thinking about that and kind of what you you see

with that kind of in the future oh absolutely I mean and I think there are a lot of wallets and a lot of teams are doing really good work towards that you know for example our as you met our while it is multi-chain right so we have eth mainnet we have a collection of pre-loaded evm chains you know optimism polygon or whatever and then we also have Solana full dap Sport and we have file coin we have Aurora which is um New Year's evm built in as well and so off top my head for nfts right so even if italics that he never predicted nfts but we have a multi-chain gallery we're working on right so I have nfts of Solana I have nfts on beef I have afts on polygons it's really cool to be able to see that all in one spot and again so

all these experiences you're talking about how are you going to get there utilizing a browser and so then a brave wallet is there the foundation is there to utilize this it's kind of like these developments are going to happen and to bring back this ordinals you know there's a large maybe it's a cohort of the Bitcoin community that is against this right but I fall on the sign of like the block space is available if Bitcoin is truly permissionless then it doesn't matter what you think if we can do it it'll be done and it's being done right and to try to censor it anyway kind of from my opinion it goes against the full ethos of it right so I think things that progressing like ordinals is really exciting and I think you know

Kyle bring back to what you're saying we don't know what's going to develop later but I think wallets are going to be there to iterate with that because you know while it's again didn't have an nft gallery now it's coming really expected you want to have an nft Gallery not just connect to openc to see what you have you want it utilize a gallery so I think you know and brave is amongst this that's why we're doing a ux like overall link while 2.0 coming up um want to make it more user-friendly more attractive more that you don't really think about it too much other wallets as well are going to be there the ones are going to survive are going to be able to iterate and to create and take advantage of the development that's happening in web 3 independent of wallets so you talked

about the version two that you guys are working on what else is within that what other features are you guys working on what else is on the roadmap right now anything else you can share with us but I can't really say it and say it too much right now working on chain Integrations I would love to have as many chains as possible available on Brave wallet and there's there's a reason why I'm not a maximalist I think that brave is really pissing themselves enough data that we're chain agnostic we have Market data in there from Queen gecko we have that's powered by zero X for ethereum and we also have um Jupiter for sorry Solana we have ens support Salon name service stoppable domain there's a lot of stuff that's all kind of like coming in you could also utilize your treasure or your Legend right so

all of these features are going to be continually looked at as like what's important for users but I think right now we're really focusing on improving that UI ux experience and then also giving more robust features to our user base now one thing about Brave wallet which is like a double-edged sword is that given that it's in the code base of the browser itself some of these features cannot come as nimbly as other Pro because we take such detail and care with user privacy and security that literally every update has to go through the same process that we do for updating the browser right and so things they move a bit slower because we're really careful to make sure that nothing that we integrate and nothing we do in the wallet puts our users at risk of any kind of privacy violation or that when

the wallet is in the browser is there anything that this does to help with I guess I don't want to call it security but helping the users prevent them from like getting fished and all that kind of stuff like right now there's a big problem in this space right new users come in they get a wallet they can't read what the transaction is they don't really know what they're doing or they click on these bad links and like their scene phrases gone or everything in their wallet is gone I'm just curious like is there any difference in the terms of what your wall is capable of because it's native to the browser is there any benefit there advantage or disadvantage maybe I'm not sure or like how are you guys thinking about improving that because obviously the wall is the ux for that so it's kind of

on you guys to like help the users there yeah absolutely I mean at the current moment with the wallet it's just like any other wallet in terms of a user has to understand now you can revoke permissions for different smart contract you will different things you've connected to yeah what I can say is that especially after eat Denver but I know for a fact there are many many many different projects coming up to address that specific problem and I think within the next year you'll see development in the space as a whole to kind of help users and guide them towards rather interacting with a malicious site or interacting with a malicious app or something that'll help protect users so I think that's coming very quickly and not just in Brave wallet but across the

board because this I can think of maybe three or four projects off top of my head that are now trying to integrate that with wallets could somebody use a different wallet within Brave browser you can install an extension yeah I mean I have different well it's installed on my Brave browser I need to it's part of my job to look at what the competition is doing I utilize metamask in the past I use Phantom Phantom's a great product as well I have nothing respect with respect for that team what they did was really great and I like the UI ux but they're not a browser right there's that that middle level so yeah look again Brave us your choice right if a user wants to install and utilize another wallet it's on us to create the best experience the most user relevant experience the most secure experience

for our users in the hope that they recognize that and utilize our wallet above others does the browser have the ability to like block extensions if they wanted to like could you guys or could any browser for example even Google just go okay we're not going to allow metamask we're not going to allow this and I'm not saying you guys would ever do anything like this I'm just curious if it's possible in crypto you always want to know like is it verifiable or do I have to trust and so like that would put you guys an advantage if it was true but I'm just curious do wallets have to trust the browsers or what's that power like there so I think that's in the policy of the Chrome extension store I don't think we have any maybe this possibility but I'm pretty confident that even if we have the opportunity to

do that we would not again of course against our ethos abuser first right so if there is a better product that a user is comfortable with we want to make sure they use that and utilize Brave and are protected and so again it's on us to create the best experience for use to recognize that I should use this wallet because I'm more secure and I know you guys can do that trust me I just maybe but Google could if they wanted to right I think it's under the preview of the Chrome Store the extension store right I don't know the answer to that question but chromium-based browsers you can go to the Google Chrome Store and install any extension or Plugin you want I mean Brave again it's open source we're open you know like that's we want to make sure that people can verify things and

the last thing we want to do is block we're not trying to put a tariff on or to you know protect our country from invading you know better products this is not Ford with the Japanese cars in the 80s you know it makes me think about Apple right now blocking uniswap's mobile app right that's Cliff wrinkles do that same thing I mean I guess they could would they right we should they you know like no definitely not Apple's a different Beast right they make their money from Hardware they don't make their money off of selling user data I mean you know they're not as great as they say but they are definitely more private and they've made moves to protect their users I'm an Apple fan and user have been for years I have too many Apple products my wife me all the time about it but I do love it and it works

but again convenience there's a cost to that there were nice so it's like the bit license here in New York I couldn't use FTX I was mad about it maybe they were right I don't think but not your keys not your coins so I would have not kept anything on there that I was able to lose anyway that's it but that's just me because you know if you're deep into crypto you understand that so you were just at East Denver or I don't know if you were there you said your team was there a lot of the buzz coming out of there is around account abstraction right now curious if you guys are thinking at all about that or how you see that changing the future of wallets we're definitely thinking about

it I don't think anybody who is in the space is not thinking about it implementation of it is a different Beast altogether I mean look it was announced there's a lot of things to do before we hit the road on all of that and what I can say is that I think that whatever choices benefit our users in terms of functionalities with another wallet that comes from account extraction I think it's safe to say that we will definitely consider how we can leverage that within Brave wallet but nothing tangible for mining on that you know it's I think it's super early man for those users who maybe haven't heard of account abstraction yet or those who are probably have heard of it but are still confused by it can you give an explanation or a definition of what it is and what it enables it's like it's

almost a smart contract wallet that allows you to kind of like bundle transactions all in one like you just don't have each of the steps or you have to like continually approve transactions it could address the need for seed phrases and products he's like there's a bunch of stuff in there that would help you to really make wallets more user-friendly in terms of recovery in terms of the usage but again super early right these are things that are going to take time to implement and come about when you look down the road one thing we're seeing a lot is and we've had a few guests on the podcast to talk about identity and they all seem to be developing their own wallets in way to manage identity and it brings up the question for me of

is there going to be one wallet that holds our driver's license and our passport and more of our identity thing and then another one that holds crypto and it holds nfts and holds everything or do you think there's going to be a different wallet for different use cases if you were to project out how do you see it I think this is the wrong way to think about it really because what we're talking about identity we're talking about I mean what are we holding in nft that demonstrates our identity and if that's the case is it the wallet or the nft and if it's the nft like what happens if you lose access nft right so the idea of identity has always been interesting to me because what are we really talking about it's like okay the Craig Wright lawsuit

and everything right so he could easily prove he's Satoshi by transferring coins and wanted so she's wallets that would be away from the prove his identity I don't because how do you will do that by demonstrating he's either controlled the private key or showing that oh I lost it or at least admitty lost it right for identity is kind of how are we addressing it right because how are we using a blockchain to enforce then we're holding a private key into a wallet so identity needs to be thought of a different way it's like you know I have a lens profile on polygon right so let's say I go on lens you know social graph and I post on Leinster and lens tube and do all these things but then I lose my private key like what happens to my identity at that point how could I prove

it's me is there a way to recover it right is there maybe not is that where account attraction comes in I don't know we don't know at this point it is definitely big thing at the end of this talked about quite a bit for example you guys brought up arches before their social recovery method for Recovery is interesting and I think that's something that would be related to that right because if I have a and let's say an NFC that does needs my the ability like I accessed my birth certificate and my medical records and whatnot but then I lose it okay but then I can you know call my wife my sister my mom you know my dog they can help me recover all these things that does make it viable that I think that would be the situation where I would see where it would make

more sense I hope my dog can help me with my recovery if I ever yeah right now my dog's just in total useless you know he brings me a lot to Joy but he's definitely not contributing to my family in any way we got a new puppy man you gotta tell me that oh no way I also have a new puppy so we can we can connect after this and tell puppy stories oh man I think announcements like you know accountabraction everything is happening we're moving down the path to making web 3 accessible for everyone right there's that avocado section and on border the next billion users was like the two slogans of each member right right now those are the two things that we took away from it all

right so let me ask you this what is the best wallet for a new user because what we've seen is somebody like read it as an example where their wallet is super simple in that you actually can't even use it really it's not really a full web 3 wallet you can't use it to you can transfer an entity off it to a different self custody wallet but it makes it really simple Starbucks being another example like we keep seeing these larger organizations creating and we talked about Amazon actually today on our show which comes out tomorrow that's very confusing because when we recorded when we come out doesn't make sense but

anyways we talked about Amazon recently and wondering if they're going to have their own wallets what do you think is going to be the best way when you say onboard a billion users what is going to be the wallet that onboards have used and maybe not the one wallet I don't mean like a specific brand I mean more so the type that onboards a billion users maybe it's running what do you think is going to be the thing that onboard billing users I mean you're gonna think I'm biased but I'm gonna say Brave right because again the same mechanisms function and brave as other wallets as well and so to go through that process and I think we work very very hard to make sure the users understand every single step in creating a wallet and even at that point we're like I don't want to write this down you

can skip it and get right into it right yeah your recovery phrase is but you know we are going to ping you to make sure you understand that right because that's really the hurdle people need to get over you know I'm crazy man I do a security audit like every year where I'll get my private Keys get a new Ledger and like activate it with the private just to make sure you can't trust it right Brave works really hard and I think to protect users and get them to understand that this is a company that is attempting to really reimagine and recreate how you're interacting with the what our wallet is there to make sure that you know how to keep your stuff safe and many other wallets do it as well but again you get the benefit of what I think is the best

browser available in the market today to do so awesome okay that leads me in really nicely into a chance for you to give your shell which you kind of already did but where can people find out more about Brave anything that you want to tell users to go do to learn maybe and then also where can people follow you and find Carlos online yeah on brave.com you know we have a Blog we pronounce obviously Twitter the Twitter spaces of where we go um we have a Community call that's open to anybody to come for brave and bat every Tuesday at 5 PM Eastern 2 p.m Pacific I am on Twitter at underscore Carlos Ace underscore you know someone else got that I'm always around so that's where you can find me and all about Brave again we're very active Brendan is very

active if there's any feedback for browser or Brave wallet you can ping Brendan on Twitter I don't know of any other CEO that will take the time and respond and then direct you to like myself or to our VP of web3 James budget but Brandon does it all the time if someone thinks hey Brenda what about this and he'll think about it right so uh or Brendan's about to get his inbox blown up he says it in every interview and we say it it's the same thing people tag him all the time trust me it's par for the course it may not be immediate but again an open is in good faith and like a good faith criticism or ask for a feature he will make his attempt to it and I think

that comes out of this idea he was at Netscape they made them made all the engineers work customer service for a little bit just to kind of get and I always like that right it's kind of like you really get to be in front of the users and really listen to how your product is functioning I mean how you can improve it I love it okay we're gonna do a bit of a speed round just before we wrap up here I'm sure personal questions what's an nft you'll never sell so this is Project that's like close to my heart it's on Solana called the Grim Syndicate and there's like these little kind of like Owen D and Dina were growing up and I still am a DND nerd when we had we also nfts make sense man if I can get a vorpal sword nft to like

decapitating demons like the best thing ever they have like a really cool aesthetic and cartoon aesthetic that I really like and they have a game it's kind of like you know turn based kind of Magic Gathering kind of thing I mean I've made friends with the team and I really like what they put out there like in terms of a kind of cool little fantasy kind of actual thing so those are they all think I'll ever sell those those are really fun cool favorite person to follow on Twitter favorite person to follow one that's a hard one oh man I gotta say probably again Andreas Antonopoulos it's just a wealth of information that you can learn for your listeners who are new uh web3 can be intimidating but it really all was like go back a Bitcoin like it just all makes sense like if you go activate coin

yeah it's good uh okay last question one thing you bought recently for under 100 that brings you Joy does not have to be a digital product it could be anything I bought a notebook I'm a notebook head so I start off my computers every now and then and like just do a lot of thinking with pen and paper and I bought this like really super cool note hardcore notebook that like I take everywhere is pretty lightweight I really enjoy it but the second I haven't done it yet would be uh mastering Bitcoin a blockchain or I have read it completely yeah but this is the next thing yeah you're actually the first person ever to say notebook or Journal as the thing that they bought recently I'm actually now that you say I'm surprised

that more people don't say that because the utility of a notebook is just incredible well that was a great episode Carlos thanks so much for joining us today and sharing so much about Brave and wallets and the future of wallets I learned to time and I'm sure listeners did too everybody out there if you're not already using Brave browser make sure you go check it out and Carlos look forward to staying in touch and having you again on the show at some point in the future appreciate it guys thanks so much for your time have a great day everybody thanks for listening in thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web 3 can be

risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one