Currently, it seems the team is very hush-hush about who they are working with. From the BAT subreddit to the RocketChat, the BAT team has always preferred to steer away from hype and to let the news and revealed partnerships speak for themselves.
So what partnerships do we know about so far?
Here’s a compilation of what’s currently known to the public, and I’ll give my best personal opinion/interpretation of the meaning and potential benefits of the partnerships.
Partner: Uphold.com
- Who are they: Uphold is a “platform for moving and holding any form of money or commodity, instantly and securely.” Basically, they’re an online money/crypto manager that lets you easily manage and buy crypto without having to deal with Bitcoin wallets, Ethereum wallets, broadcasting transactions to the blockchain (sending crypto), etc. For a newbie entering the market, creating an account on Uphold is probably the easiest and safest way to get and store your crypto (next to Coinbase, in my humble opinion. However, Coinbase cannot hold BAT – not yet).
- What this partnership means: Partnering with a large money managing entity like Uphold serves 2 major purposes. The first one is to provide an easy way to acquire BAT (sort of. I’ve heard that you cannot directly purchase via credit card, and have to still transfer funds from a bank account before BAT can be purchased). The second, and more important purpose of Uphold, is to act as a payment gateway for Advertisers and publishers to directly do business with Brave. This establishes the groundwork for large amounts of money to flow into the Brave/BAT ecosystem while conforming to KYC and anti-laundering regulations.
- In simple terms: Brave/BAT is set up to deal with large amounts of money in the future. We’re talking hundreds of thousands, to millions, to possibly billions. It will also possibly allow users to purchase and sell BAT directly through their browser. Imagine normal, everyday Joe’s being able to buy crypto currency through their browser!
Partner: DuckDuckGo.com
- Who are they: DuckDuckGo is “The search engine that doesn’t track you.” Unlike Google who follows you around with trackers and advertisements and modified search results, DuckDuckGo prides itself on maintaining user privacy with limited advertisements. From Alexa results, you can see are getting more popular by the day, and may possibly be a contender for one of the top search engines. They are reminiscent of how FireFox dethroned Internet Explorer during the 90s and early 2000s.
- What this partnership means: Partnering with DuckDuckGo allows wonderful things to happen. A browser that blocks all ads and trackers – meets the search engine that doesn’t track. Together, users will have complete privacy surfing the internet, while at the same time being rewarded for their attention from advertisements that they do allow. DuckDuckGo became a verified publisher in November 2017. However, in the BAT RocketChat, one of the admins stated that they will be more than just a Brave Publisher, and that they may play a larger role in participation of the platform. If you ask me, DuckDuckGo may be one of the first and primary sites to show off paid Advertisements, where users get paid each time they see an ad or use the search engine. If anything could dethrone Google, this would be it!
- In simple terms: Top privacy browser meets top privacy search engine. It is still unknown what role DuckDuckGo will specifically play in the BAT platform, but they could be the launchpad for the new BAT advertisement ecosystem!
Partnerships in the future
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