I'm willing to make a speculative bet on Brave/BAT. The existing user growth is good, and the incentives for their ad system are basically correct for everyone.
The product Brave is actually peddling is akin to anti-cheat software: It takes steps to prevent fraud throughout digital advertising and improve the cost effectiveness of digital ad campaigns. That pitch means that they have the ear of advertisers already, and it's only a question of executing on the rest. Given prodding, advertisers will cooperate in order to fix up the market because what they really want is a "commoditize your complements" scenario. They are not there to become adtech wizards. They want to find qualified customers for their primary business. If Brave succeeds in forming a coalition, you'll start to see businesses from other sectors talk it up and give users and content creators hard incentives to sign on. They can even use such marketing efforts as part of their own speculative plays on the currency.
On the user end of things, that means that Brave engages in the click fraud arms race, but with higher-powered weaponry than can be accessed from within Javascript. They get a deal that is a definite improvement on the status quo: they choose exactly when and where they want to see ads. For the other parts of the system, the cryptocurrency marketplace replaces most of the middlemen and associated incentives for fraud. If you're in the business of total control either way(whether it be "never-again-an-ad" or "I want to access as many users as possible"), it's a devil's bargain, but if you're interested in getting the Web on a more sustainable path where quality is encouraged, this is something that could do it.
The product Brave is actually peddling is akin to anti-cheat software: It takes steps to prevent fraud throughout digital advertising and improve the cost effectiveness of digital ad campaigns. That pitch means that they have the ear of advertisers already, and it's only a question of executing on the rest. Given prodding, advertisers will cooperate in order to fix up the market because what they really want is a "commoditize your complements" scenario. They are not there to become adtech wizards. They want to find qualified customers for their primary business. If Brave succeeds in forming a coalition, you'll start to see businesses from other sectors talk it up and give users and content creators hard incentives to sign on. They can even use such marketing efforts as part of their own speculative plays on the currency.
On the user end of things, that means that Brave engages in the click fraud arms race, but with higher-powered weaponry than can be accessed from within Javascript. They get a deal that is a definite improvement on the status quo: they choose exactly when and where they want to see ads. For the other parts of the system, the cryptocurrency marketplace replaces most of the middlemen and associated incentives for fraud. If you're in the business of total control either way(whether it be "never-again-an-ad" or "I want to access as many users as possible"), it's a devil's bargain, but if you're interested in getting the Web on a more sustainable path where quality is encouraged, this is something that could do it.