So much about Brave raises scammy red flags every time I look at it.
However, my main reason for ditching Chrome years ago was the fact that I think a browser engine monoculture is bad for the web as a whole, especially if that engine is primarily controlled by a single corporate entity.
Manifest v3 and other Google nonsense came later, and are extra reasons to stay away from Chrome, but I still feel strongly that a good alternative needs to use a different engine.
De-googled in the "we make some patches to remove things we think are hostile from Google" sense but yes: they're still completely reliant on them for engine development.
Yeah I'm not at all interested in Brave, that's a dumpster fire of it's own. And that still gives control to Google by owning the defacto implementation of browsing the internet. There needs to be an actual alternative to Chrome.