Brave promises that in 2021 it will launch a new “more suitable” referral program. Current participants must achieve their activities in 14 days.
The blockchain-based internet browser team Brave decided to end the Brave Referral Program that has been running on the platform for more than two years. It is a program implemented in February 2018, which allowed content creators to obtain Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for the promotion of Brave. Through Brave Referral, the download of the browser was promoted for new users through unique referral codes.
In a publication on its website dated November 9, Brave points out that they have plans to launch a new referral program, “more adapted to our scale and our community,” the details of which will be announced in early 2021.
In the meantime, they will begin to scale back the current program. As a result, as of November 9, content creators currently using Brave Referral have 14 days to complete their promotional activity.
It is further explained that after November 23, new referrals added for the first time will not be eligible for payment. Brave will pay for trades that occur before December 24 only if the user has been active for 30 days. Confirmations in December will be paid at the beginning of January 2021.
Brave indicates in its publication that during this time of the program’s deployment, more than 20 million monthly active users were integrated into the platform. The amount of BAT tokens planned to be in distribution to content creators was also far exceeded.
Fraudulent activities with the Referral Program
Brave made the decision only a few months after they detected fraudulent activities through the program. As Brave reported last June, they managed to identify a large number of fraudulent referrals in a small set of countries.
The browser was reportedly able to stop this activity before the BAT tokens were paid, paralyzing the program for users in China, Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Ukraine. As a security measure, from that moment on, an Uphold account with verified identification was a requirement to participate.
Subsequently, other changes were announced in October. On that occasion, it was decided not to accept more participants, due to the rapid growth of new content creators through Brave Referral.
Regarding the closure of the Referral Program, some Brave Twitter followers linked it to fraudulent activities and the focus on paying to get as many referrals as possible. User @ 20pad20 spoke of malvertising by some advertisers, who “have been using the program to mislead the public.”
A few months ago, the company was mired in controversy over the inclusion of referral links in its website “suggestions”. Several people found these types of links that directed them to Binance. Although Brendan Eich, co-founder, and CEO of Brave, said it was a mistake, other users claimed to have found links to the Ledger, Trezor, and Coinbase sites.
The question turned in tone to the fact that publicity was made in a hidden way. A fact that contrasts with Brave’s postulates in favor of privacy and the fight against invasive, and unauthorized advertising, which exists in the rest of the Internet platforms.
By: Jenson Nuñez.
