Empowerment Bringing Web3 Power Tools to a User first Web Lucas Mulks

hey everybody um i'm going to talk to you guys about uh web 3 power tools from user first web i'm luke i work at brave i started early there worked on the bat white paper um at brave what we've been doing over the past few years is kind of uh introducing passive crypto earning uh with the first kind of global private ad platform so oh okay got it got it if you guys can just exit the room quietly thank you so we uh yeah we introduced passive crypto earning with the first global private ad platform um and we kind of scaled that up from proof of concept because no one had really ever done anything like that before with uh privacy in mind uh and and now it's a multi-million dollar a month business um and so what we're trying to do is apply the learnings that we had there because in a couple clicks we have millions of people earning crypto without having to know how blockchains work or any of the cognitive load that you know is a hindrance to a lot of people getting started in this space so we're taking those learnings we introduced a wallet native wallet into the browser in november on desktop and in mobile so now we have like 54 million monthly active users that have web3 wallets in their browsers by default so we're kind of working now and taking those learnings of scaling millions of people into private advertising and figuring out ways to surface the wallet and get millions and millions of people using crypto which kind of there's a lot of parallels between the attention economy situation on the web and you know wealth generation wealth growth in uh financial markets right like um the people have been getting wrecked over the uh since the 70s right like in and like truly wrecked like you know like this is not like this whole thing's off the chart bad right like and um this is pretty personal for me like uh you know i've helped out family through tough situations because crypto has empowered me to help them um and and i've got tools through the work that many of you in this room have put into building um to uh be able to help people out in my life that are important and i wouldn't have been able to do that otherwise and so we're kind of taking that sentiment and driving it to the masses and figuring out ways to get this in front of many many many more people and at the same time like the situation with the web and privacy and user agency is wrecked as well like surrendering your privacy has basically become a business requirement for using the web and so brave we've taken a really user-first approach to how we do everything and that means that anything that would any third party that would try to collect your data without you knowing about it or in the background um without your consent and not content but consent as in like you're giving them the data right like um not them collecting it or harvesting it from you we block all that stuff um and and we even you know to our own detriment we block our own stuff because you know you got to put users priorities first and um and you know just to kind of really drive the point home there's 8 000 companies that most people in this room have not ever heard of that are all collecting and profiling your information and making a ton of money off of it and you're getting nothing from that uh maybe like some ad that follows you around or you know some medial thing but you're not getting any type of meaningful reward for that with all this together it can be scary like you got like your privacy you don't know where it's going like everyone's collecting your data and you know looking out and seeing what the current financial situation is the world like it's it's hard to imagine you know what's gonna happen but you know the cool thing is we have like the tools and like everyone here is flipping the script like if you're working on this technology you're part of the solution like um these are things like we this is our shot to basically try to correct course in my in my own personal point of view i mean like we're at a point now where like we're running out of things for them to sell out so like if we don't start to put tools in the hands of the people to take control of their own lives in an easy way then you know we're just basically going to capitulate and i don't know if anybody in this room wants that to happen um but you know you really get empowerment through to center mediation so by having user first web principles and from web 2 era like where you know you're keeping that users privacy protected and you're making sure that they're the one in the driver's seat combining that with web3 communities and applications and protocols we get this marriage of like control agency and empowerment that you're not going to get without it um you know and just to kind of rehash right like your info your device your data like your interest as a priority like neutralize any third parties that are trying to steal your info and um you know having it so that you're actually getting because your participation in this ecosystem drives value you should be getting rewarded for that and then the same thing similar things tie in with web3 communities and application too like everybody's addressing problems as a community everyone's working together it's a collective effort right like and you know it starts with trustlessness um and so this is all kind of like a little bit higher level you all know about the nuts and bolts of these things but like just like anything else like this is going to be a progression and it's going to be a mix of like hodgepodge blobby ugly beautiful things living together just like most radical innovations have been on the web and uh the messiness is okay um you know there's going to be but there's things to be kind of mindful of um but i think like the the biggest thing i'm excited about right now is the ability to start we're finally at this place where we can start empowering personal finance for millions of people direct deposit services are coming in where you can directly deposit crypto into your wallets in addition to buying through traditional on-ramps etc so you've got inflows in you know like gensler was saying five bucks a week so you can maybe earn eight percent um that wasn't true like you're not even getting one percent but then you flip it to you know crypto and stable coins and you're getting five to eight percent um you know this is something you can put in front of an everyday person and say your digital dollars in wells fargo are getting you nothing and you're paying a monthly fee and there's a minimum on that and what or you know you can put it into a stable coin and earn eight percent which one do you want like you ask any of your family that they'll say well eight percent sounds pretty good um that's empowerment you're we're giving people things that they can you know increase their value increase their wealth um married that in like outflows right like you've got the ability now there are several cards in market where you can pay with crypto on rails some of them have reward programs um you know so we've got this this inflow route we've got this way to kind of like save and earn and we've got a way to spend things anywhere whether it's e-commerce or in real life uh anywhere you know these processors are accepted um and you know the thing that i'm pretty bullish about but you know not necessarily only applies to brave either but but having this concept of banking from the edge in your browser like and and making that a reality and these things have been piecemeal but like one thing we're really focusing on is how we can put these things together and how we can make this easy for millions of people and so like just an open invite like i'm around this week like if you guys are working on something that's interesting and that we can kind of surface up in a way that's easy for people to use let me know because that's a challenge with us we're in a different position we have millions of people so you want to surface things that are safe and you know you also have to appeal to the people that are you know testing the stuff and building these things too so um we you know we want to let everybody play how they want to play and then we also want to you know distill down the the real real common sense added value things that people will understand and help to kind of tell that story tie those things together and get people transacting in in these uh in this model also like just some thoughts to keep in mind because like i inspect a ton of traffic on the internet like i did advertising before i came to brave um i'm seeing some things that are kind of troubling like when i go to a lot of sites if we're really going in on this thing i would just you know advise everybody to really keep user first principles in mind there with all of this new analytics around wallets and compliance and things like that you if you're putting google stack on your site and you're putting wallet analytics there to track all of your crypto transactions because you have to um you're leaving your users in a pretty bad spot because if any authority needs to find anything out you've just given them an even better fingerprint than they had before so these are things to keep in mind like it might not be fun to have the bells and whistles sometimes but do you need them like what are you tracking what are the things that are important to your business if you're you know a d5 application do you really have to have google stack on your site like these are just things to think about because really like it's it's pretty trivial for somebody with the authority to figure everything out that you're doing and um you know uh especially on the crypto side too when you add in this in there so just things to think about right like um and just an example right like when you're when you're kind of building for user first you go to a site and this one was from tmz um and you know the the top example shows 124 requests that's what you need to load on the page for a user to get the stories the content the other browser that doesn't protect the user's privacy loads 1321 requests so outside of that 124 that gives me the same exact story all of these extra requests are taking my data and sending it to people i don't know and profiling it against other data they have and it's all kind of in this loom escape blob that's out there so keep these things in mind like because there's a lot of pressure really like everything's moving towards application level and i'm already seeing like terms of service and other things that are basically like boilerplate from like you know web 2 or mobile app stuff it is the wrong direction in my view to basically give the government a better fingerprint or give you know an adversary something else to take against you and you know we if we're all into this together like we should be really kind of being mindful about privacy and around protecting users privacy and i mean we have kind of a batteries included approach with brave but you know with any other browser there's things ad blockers tracking protection other all that stuff that you can apply to but anyway the best thing to do is to just try and not collect the data if you don't have to um so um you know this is kind of it i mean like i thank you all i just kind of wanted to give you all a view of what we're up to where we're heads are at we're looking at like you know integrating new events too but but if we can get the financial inflows and outflows plumbed in easy for millions of people to start using i think that that's getting us up on the right foot