On September 1, Brave Software announced it is testing a Bitcoin based micropayment solution for its free Brave browser to allow users to choose which publishers they want to support, reports Computerworld. The idea is to provide a compromise between readers’ decision to block obtrusive, annoying ads and website tracking and publishers’ need to generate advertising revenue to cover the cost of operations.

“For the first time in history of web browsers, people can now seamlessly reward the sites whose content they value and wish to support, while remaining untracked by anyone, including us at Brave Software, Inc.,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and president of Brave Software.

According to a blog post where Eich announced the beta test, to access the Brave Payments interface, users turn on the feature from the Brave preferences page. Users then fund their Brave wallet starting at $5 a month with Bitcoins, controlling which sites they want to support by enabling or disabling funding for the sites they visit.

“We’ve heard from many people who say that they are tired of the current ad-tech ecosystem that clogs their web pages and data connections with annoying ads and tracking pixels and scripts, and that they would be happy to go ad-free if they could still funnel their support directly to the website they visit,” Eich said.

“Brave Payments now makes it possible for such users to try sending small payments to sites, at whatever aggregate support level they choose…,” Eich added. “You shouldn’t have to pay anything to avoid bad ads, of course – but if your favorite sites rely on ad revenue, now you have a way to help them all, efficiently and privately, while blocking ads.”

Brave is partnering with BitGo to provide free bitcoin wallets to users and with Coinbase so users can add money to their wallets directly from their credit or debit cards. The purpose of the bitcoin wallet is to guarantee privacy.

Payments to publishers are entirely optional; the Brave browser remains free to use. Brave said the monthly contributions are split among the sites readers have selected. The percentages paid to publishers depend on the number of pages visited and how much time readers spend on each site. To receive their share of the money collected, publishers must be verified. Brave keeps a 5 percent cut of the total collected to cover fees and infrastructure costs.

Another component of the Brave browser is that Brave replaces some existing ads with ads from its own network. According to Brave’s FAQs, they block “eyesore” ads but don’t replace those. They will however replace “certain standard-sized ads.” Users are in control of their ad experience when using the Brave browser. They can turn off ad blocking and ad replacement.

“We aim for higher quality that what would have been served in those spaces, so we reduce the total number of ads experienced by the user and increase the quality and relevance, while simultaneously blocking trackers that follower your activity across sites,” Brave said.

Brave said it will not accept compensation from publishers to avoid having their ads blocked.

“Our goal is to make better revenue for all publishers, and give users better ads and control of their data,” said Brave. “We believe Brave Payments will also help reform the ad-tech ecosystem by giving both browser users and website content creators the fair deal that they deserve, based on ownership of their data.”

Insider Take:

This is an interesting take on the ad blocking dilemma. Publishers are losing billions of dollars in ad revenue because of ad blocking every year, but readers are tired of obtrusive, annoying ads as well as being tracked online. Readers want to retain their privacy and control of their online experience. Where is the middle ground?

We aren’t convinced that this is the answer, particularly where Brave is replacing publishers’ selected ads with their own ad network, but this is the closest we’ve seen to a compromise on ad blocking. Brave is doing several things right here. First, they are being transparent with all parties by explaining how this will work, and second, testing the accuracy of their systems, ideas and assumptions is critical to their success.

For more on ad blocking today, read our August report: “State of Ad Blocking 2016: What Publishers Need to Know.”