The Power of Your Data: Be Brave, Be Bold, Be Private | 🦁 |
Introducing Brave a Web3 enabled privacy-first web browser
GM. 🫶
This is Web3 Espresso ☕ - the Web3 Newsletter for entrepreneurs, marketers, and enthusiasts looking to understand how Web3 technology is changing the world we live in.
Hello 😎,
Are you concerned about your online data?
Have you ever asked yourself who owns the data or how it is being shared?
You're not alone.
The internet has revolutionised the way we communicate, learn, and entertain ourselves, but it's also left us vulnerable to data breaches and identity theft.
Yes, you are being followed.
From browsing the web to using our smartwatches, or even driving our cars, our personal information is being collected everywhere.
While this may seem like a cause for alarm, it's not all bad news. Data collection through cookies has allowed companies to create a more personalised experience online? Also, we are also just starting to see how data aggregation through machine learning and artificial intelligence can exponentially improve our productivity.
Whether you don’t mind being tracked or are absolutely against it, I believe that the key is to ensure transparency in usage and find a way to tilt the balance somewhat when it comes to fair remuneration based on the data that is used.
Data privacy and Web3 are closely linked. Web3 has been built on the premises of decentralisation, transparency, and user control.
This week, I explore the link between data and Web3, and introduce you to the Brave browser - a Web3 enabled privacy-first search engine.
Read on.
What’s in store today:
🥡 The Weekly Roundup 5in5
🍿 The NFT 100 List - A must-have list of Twitter Profiles to Follow
📕 The Crypto Report 2023 - A Breakdown of the Key Industry Trends
🦁 The Power of Your Data: Be Brave, Be Bold, Be Private | 🦁 |
How is Your Data Collected?
Who Owns Your Data?
Why is Data so Valuable?
How Does Web3 Address Data?
The Brave Web Browser: A Privacy-Focused Web3 Solution
Let’s go! 🥤
🥡 5 in 5 …
The Five Stories You Need to Know This Week
Is Your Tech Cie Ready for Web3 by Bain & Co 👉 see it here
The Metaverse - Podcast by MIT Tech Review 👉 listen to it here
Rolling Stones NFT Drop 40 Collectible Photos 👉 read it here
Ralph Lauren Accelerates Web3 Push 👉 read it here
TinTin Joins the NFT Trend, Better Late Than Never 👉 see it here
🍿 The NFT 100 List is Out
Web3 Media, NFT Now has unveiled this year’s annual list showcasing the more influential individuals in Web3.
If you’re just starting out in this space, this is a great way to easily get a sense of who is doing what and start building your connections.
You can see the full list 👉 here
📕 The 2023 Crypto Report
a16z Crypto, the venture capital fund managed by Andreessen Horowitz that launched a $4.5 billion web3 fund last year, recently published its Crypto Market Report. As one of the largest players in the industry, the report is scrutinised by many to assess key trends and market direction.
The report highlights the importance of Web3, blockchain infrastructure, and a price-innovation cycle that makes the bear market a prime time for builders.
The 2023 Crypto Report 👉 download it here
🦁 The Power of Your Data: Be Brave, Be Bold, Be Private
When you are online, nothing is truly private. All you have to do is visit a website or use your smart phone, and information about you is collected—information such as:
songs or plug-ins you’ve downloaded
your computer or phone’s technical configurations
addresses of previous sites you’ve visited
your email address
your location on your phone
How is Your Data Collected?
Your data is collected through a variety of methods, including cookies, tracking scripts, and web beacons.
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device when you visit a website. These files can track your browsing history, login details, and other information.
Tracking scripts and web beacons are used to track your online activity, such as clicks, mouse movements, and scrolling.
These methods are used to create a profile of your online behaviour.
Who Owns Your Data?
The ownership of your data is a complicated issue. The Boston Review wrote an article on data ownership and highlighted that U.S. law today provides no clear answer to the question of who owns personal data.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the toughest privacy and security law in the world. Under the GDPR, individuals have the right to know what personal data is being collected about them, how it is being used, and with whom it is being shared.
In Europe, GDPR went into effect in 2018 in response to growing worries about how businesses were gathering, using, and sharing personal data.
Why is Data so Valuable?
Back in 2017, The Economist wrote an article aptly entitled “ The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data” and compared data to oil a century prior.
What happened in the last 15 years to make personal data one of the world’s most valuable resources?
Smartphones and the internet have increased the availability, pervasiveness, and value of personal data. Whether you're going for a run, watching TV, or simply sitting in traffic, almost every activity leaves a digital trail.
There are 4 reasons why data has become so valuable:
Insight generation: Tech companies use data to gain insights about their users, customers, and market trends.
Personalisation: Data allows tech companies to personalise their products and services based on user preferences and behaviour.
Targeted advertising: Tech companies use data to target their advertising to specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviour.
Monetisation: Tech companies can monetise their data by selling it to other companies or using it to develop new products and services.
Data is an enormously valuable asset because it can be used to draw inferences not just about expected future behaviour, but as we are seeing with the explosion of AI technology, data can be used to train machine-learning technology to exponentially increase the speed of output.
Google can see what I search for, Facebook can see what I share, and Amazon can see what I buy.
For some, one of the frustrations of the internet of today is that most of our data is centralised and ultimately owned by one of the Big Five (Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft). If the data is owned by them, so is the revenue that is derived from its usage.
How Does Web3 Address Data?
Going back to The Economist article above, the author proposed in 2017 two ideas on how to radically rethink the way to deal with data. The first involves modernising antitrust methodologies, and the second brings forward the ideas of ownership, transparency, and remuneration.
So forward thinking.
“To loosen the grip that providers of online services have over data and give more control to those who supply them. More transparency would help: companies could be forced to reveal to consumers what information they hold and how much money they make from it.” The Economist
The driving forces behind the Web3 architecture are transparency, ownership, and permissionlessness. In Web3, transparency and data ownership are fundamental principles where users own their data, are appropriately compensated for it, and are aware of what others are doing with it.
What does data ownership look like in Web3?
The architecture of the internet is such that it allows large corporations to censor content on social media and payment gateways to block users as long as it suits their convenience.
Web3 has introduced a decentralised internet backed by blockchain, meaning it completely changes how data is stored and used. Instead of being held and controlled by one central entity on a giant server, data reverts to and is owned by millions of user devices linked together by one network.
The advantage that Web3 introduces for data owners is that it ensures transparency so that no entity can manage user data or share it with third parties without the user’s knowledge or permission.
Although in Web3, data is stored on the blockchain, where it remains transparent and easily traceable, this is not the same as privacy. It is quite the opposite.
What does data privacy look like in Web3?
Here are four ways that blockchain can help protect your data privacy.
You give permission: companies and individuals can only access blockchain-based data with your permission.
You decide how long data is stored: centralised databases like Gmail and Facebook typically keep your information indefinitely. However, blockchain technology lets you set a deadline for when your data expires and gets deleted from the network.
You can create a blockchain-based identification: this is your unique, encrypted “fingerprint, a blockchain public key that stores your personal information, such as your name and address
Use DApps (Decentralised Applications): DApps are digitised permissionless applications deployed and running on a blockchain. You do not need to provide personal information when using a DApp; instead, DApps employ smart contracts to carry out transactions between two unidentified parties without requiring a centralised authority to validate the transaction. (You can see the 10 most used DApps of 2023 in this article here)
Concluding thoughts
Web3 does not provide all the answers, far from it. However, I appreciate the fact that the goals and objectives in terms of data ownership and privacy are clearly stated on the box: namely, that the user should be fully aware of how their data is being collected, how it is being used, and how much money is being derived from it.
This, in itself, is a big step forward.
I don’t think that data collection is a bad thing. Our user experience navigating the web has increased tenfold. Technology has become a lot more intuitive and seamless, and collecting data, has allowed companies to create a more personalised experience for us.
The solutions offered by Web3 technology also move the needle on the user’s side in terms of responsibility and action. It is difficult to imagine a world where everyone takes proactive steps to secure their data. Hopefully Web3 technology providers will make this process seamless as well.
The Brave Web Browser: A Privacy-Focused Web3 Solution
As I was researching this week’s newsletter, I discovered a different kind of internet browser—it’s called Brave. It is a browser that puts user privacy and security first by blocking all trackers, cookies, and other methods of collecting your data.
Who is behind BRAVE?
Brendan Eich is the CEO and was the creator of Javascript. Brian R. Bondy is the founder and lead developer, and he was previously at Khan Academy, Mozilla and Evernote.
What does the Brave browser have to offer that makes it more secure?
It has four inbuilt features that achieve the security features that you would usually get from externally downloaded privacy extensions:
Ad and tracker blockers
HTTPS everywhere
Fingerprint blocker (can’t tell your OS or device)
Script blocker
Brave is built on the Chromium architecture, the open-source browser used by a lot of other browsers. It is structured similarly to Chrome, so you feel right at home, and the interface functions the way you expect. You can also use your existing Chrome extensions on Brave.4 cool benefits of the Brave Browser
Surf the web faster: By excluding unwanted ads, you can boost your web browsing performance and surf the web faster.
Inbuilt security: Brave has inbuilt security features that you would usually need to download separately as extensions.
Save money thanks to the in-built ad blockers by avoiding any unwanted data charges that incur when you download ads and trackers.
Brave Rewards: Brave has created a blockchain based reward system that lets you earn revenue in cryptocurrency and use that crypto to reward your favourite creators. You can tip creators that are verified with Brave - using BAT Tokens. You can either buy tokens or enable web ads.
Tor Powered Incognito mode: When you use the incognito mode on Google Chrome to browse privately the functionality doesn’t look at your web history to display SERPS but does track the sites you visit. TOR provides total privacy. It does not share your web browsing history and stops any tracking on the sites you visit.
What happens to ad revenue?
Brave will block some of the ads you see, but not all of them. If you receive an ad (once you’ve opted in), instead of paying the web host alone for the time, the ad revenue (Brave Rewards) is split between the person viewing the content and the person producing the content.
The Brave business model is based on the equitable distribution of ad revenue. It’s bold, but I feel that it also gives advertisers the opportunity to create a different relationship with the user.
Introducing Brave Search
Brave Search is an open-source, first-party search engine. It is similar to Google Search and Bing but does not track your queries or preferences. Brave appears to be using its own proprietary ranking algorithm.
You can access it at search.brave.com.
Why is Brave Web3 enabled?
Brave uses blockchain technology to power its rewards programme. They are using an alternative advertising model where the user—not the advertiser—determines a more equitable redistribution of ad revenue.
The browser promises to funnel 70 percent of earned revenue to users who load up and view the ads. The remaining 30 percent will go to the browser's developers.
You watch an ad, earn a token (called a BAT token), and can directly fund your favourite websites and content creators.
I have just started using Brave and really enjoy the interface and the visibility it gives me in terms of the number of trackers and ads that are blocked (see below).
I have also enjoyed the ad-free experience (especially on YouTube) and on media sites that are usually very crowded with display ads and pop-ups. I can also see a clear difference in the speed of navigation when I am surfing the web.
I do not know yet if I will switch to Brave. At present, all my digital ecosystem is on Chrome (well done, Google), and although I like the idea behind the revenue share model, I don't know if I will create the habit of manually rewarding content creators that I like.
That was intense - time to kick back and relax.
That’s all for this week… 🫶
Please note that I do not recommend or endorse the companies and organisations mentioned in this newsletter. This content is purely informative and not a recommendation. Always be mindful of where you connect your wallet. Always do your own research. 💛