Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

A "conflict of interest" doesn't necessarily imply that you've done anything wrong yet, it merely says that the incentives are strongly in favor of you doing something wrong. In my experience, that means that when the cards are on the table you will do the wrong thing, not because you're a bad person or anything, but because you don't want to give up your funding and business.

It may just be that making a lot of money and serving users are fundamentally incompatible. And anyone who actually wants to prioritize serving users over making a lot of money needs to at least be open to that possibility. I really hope they aren't incompatible, for both your sake and mine--I'd like to be rich as much as anyone.

2. This is a non-reason. Domain ownership is already verified by certificate authorities, and there's no reason anyone should trust your centralized authority more than CAs centralized authority. In the very best case, where you do exactly what you're claiming you're going to do and allow other oracles, you've pointlessly reinvented CAs. But you haven't gotten there yet, so right now it just looks like you've created a CA system where you're the only CA, which is objectively worse.

If you want a blockchain solution, fixing the bugs in Namecoin[1] would be a start, although admittedly that technology has yet to play out in practice. It's possible a similar system could be implemented on top of BAT. The difficulty here is that you'd be reinventing the DNS system in tandem.

Let's be clear here, your TOS says you can censor people based on subjective criteria.[2] So if you claim "we do not censor", why don't you say that where it's legally binding?

3. So if you're arguing volatility is the issue, why didn't you just use USD? If you needed funding--again, that's your problem, not one users care about. You don't get a free pass on technology decisions that harm users just because they helped you get funding.

I am genuinely sad that corporations have proven themselves untrustworthy so many times that I can't trust you. As I've said elsewhere, you seem like a decent person with good intentions.

[1] https://www.namecoin.org/

[2] "As a condition of use, you promise not to use the Service for any purpose that is prohibited by the Terms of Use. For purposes of the Terms of Use, the term “Content” includes, without limitation, any information, data, text, photographs, videos, software, scripts, graphics, and interactive features generated, provided, or otherwise made accessible on or through the Service. By way of example, and not as a limitation, you shall not (and shall not permit any third party to) take any action (including contributing any Content) that: would constitute a violation of any applicable law, rule or regulation; infringes any intellectual property or other right of any other person or entity; is threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another’s privacy, tortious, obscene, offensive, or profane; constitutes unauthorized or unsolicited advertising, junk or bulk e-mail; contains software viruses or any other similar computer codes, files, or programs; or impersonates any person or entity." -- quoted from https://brave.com/terms-of-use/ , note that later it says, "Brave may terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time if you fail to comply with these Terms of Use, which may result in the forfeiture and destruction of all information associated with your account."

"The unfortunate consequence is that software vendors — including browser vendors — must not be blindly trusted. Not because such vendors don’t want to protect user privacy. Rather, because a law might force vendors to secretly violate their own principles and do things they don’t want to do."

And that doesn't just apply to the NSA forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of arrest. It also applies to major sources of funding forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of defunding you.

I want a browser made by people who would shut down their business rather than compromise users. And so far in this conversation, it doesn't even sound like you've considered that possibility or believe it could happen, so how can we trust that you'd do that?

For Mozilla to use GA instead of self-hosted Matomo is odd to me as a founder of mozilla.org (none are left at Mozilla now, FYI). We do the latter at Brave. Is it just for convenience?