This is a seachange in how online advertising functions, which currently requires cookies to personalise ads and track whether a user has interacted with them.“The open secret within the advertising industry is that it’s built on exploiting our data,” said Gener8 founder Sam Jones at the beginning of what has come to be known as
The business Jones pitched to the “dragons” promises to block advertisers from tracking browsing data while paying users a share of the advertising revenues. Brave, an open-source Chromium-based browser, launched a similar system where users would be paid in a cryptocurrency called the Basic Attention Token .
This allows users to choose whether to block a website’s ads or not, while still earning BAT on sites they have allowed ads for.