🙅 No spying

GM! 

Today is bittersweet, because it means that Permissionless is over. But it’s also Friday, so we’re gearing up for a weekend ahead that involves closing Telegram and the email inbox for a bit and hopefully touching some grass.

My big-picture takeaway from Permissionless is one you may have already heard on CT or on the ground: Crypto is coming down to earth. We’re trying to be useful as an industry, after years of froth, fraud, fun and chaos. 

We are so ready for good crypto apps that just work — and don’t scare away those who want lower-risk financial tools.

— Kate Irwin

Brave CEO: We’re in a battle against big tech

Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.

It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins. 

But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.

“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.

“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party traffic, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”

Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.” 

But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.

“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he said.

Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience. 

“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s transparency page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.

And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).

“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.

Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation launched just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.

Last month, Brave said it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others. 

During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code. 

Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.

“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”

We now know the Coinbase Wallet’s anticipated overhaul includes a name change. 

There’s also a Base event happening July 16. 

Given this image from the event’s website, plus what’s already been shared about the wallet revamp, we can safely assume the social network side of the wallet is gonna be a big part of it:

I noticed a while back that the URL for Coinbase’s defunct NFT marketplace redirects to its wallet. I’m interpreting that as another hint on what’s been cooked up. 

And who knows, maybe this tweet from Brian Armstrong could be a hint, too.