BAT Roadmap 4.0 | Brave
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BAT Roadmap 4.0
Published
Jul 9, 2026
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BAT, creators, & Brave Rewards
The Web continues to evolve, bringing new and emerging challenges and threats to users. Brave was born to meet exactly this kind of challenge: to fix the Web by building user-first alternatives to more privacy-harming defaults. Since then, Brave has expanded that user-first mission into a product used by over 120 million people worldwide.
With the September 2016 introduction of the Brave Payments proof of concept, Brave began applying that mission to Web monetization, with features that combine zero knowledge and blockchain cryptography. Lessons learned from the Brave Payments proof of concept drove the evolution to the Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Brave Rewards, growing an ecosystem of private advertising and creator contributions to tens of millions of Brave Rewards users and over 2 million verified websites and content creators.
The economics of the Web are undergoing rapid change and innovation. AI adoption is changing the way users engage with content. Stablecoins and blockchain technology are upgrading the payments and transactional space, while merchants, restaurants, and the places we make everyday purchases adopt “cashless-only” payments. Without a digital alternative, the anonymity afforded by the wallet and cash in your back pocket may be lost in a cashless economy.
Creators continue to face challenges for how to fund their content, and those challenges have grown significantly with AI. With the growth of AI use and summarization, creators often have less visibility into where and how their content is being used, receive less attribution for that use, and generally are not compensated for it.
Users and creators should earn in this ecosystem, and not be left behind. Brave aims to rise to meet these new challenges, while growing BAT utility and the larger ecosystem. This means continuing the tradition of building solutions that meet users and creators where they are, and including them in the economics. This also means meeting users where they are transacting both within and beyond the browser. BAT Roadmap 4.0 therefore marks an important shift in the evolution of the Basic Attention Token, Brave Rewards, and Brave Creators within the transactional attention economy.
Initiatives
Roadmap 4.0 brings together the following mutually reinforcing initiatives:
Internet-payments x402 and Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) : Supporting autonomous agentic payments in the browser, for Brave’s premium offerings and for Creator content.
A new, unified Brave Wallet : A new, in-browser Brave Wallet experience that brings traditional payment methods (including saved credit cards, self-custody crypto accounts, and Brave Rewards) into one intuitive interface.
BravePay : A stablecoin protocol layer that enables users, creators, and merchants to transact, earn, and settle privately on-chain.
Brave Rewards Card : A stablecoin-powered virtual and physical payment card with competitive purchase rewards.
Creator Contribution Protocol : A system for compensating verified creators when their content is used in AI experiences.
BravePay SDK and Rewards SDK : Open-source SDKs that allow developers to quickly integrate BravePay and Brave Rewards functionality.
For merchants, the SDKs will make it easy to support payment methods built on the BravePay protocol.
For app developers, the SDKs will enable user onboarding to BravePay-powered payments and provide access to the broader Brave Rewards ecosystem, including Brave Ads for additional monetization, and Brave Creators, connecting developers to millions of registered websites and content creators.
As we iterate and continue to pursue product-market fit, some of the roadmap items above may become less of a focus over time, while others may be prioritized. Useful roadmaps provide direction while remaining flexible enough to adapt to unforeseen challenges. We plan to publish regular updates on roadmap progress, along with publishing detailed posts and calls to action for the community for items in the sections below.
Internet-payments x402 and Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) support in Brave
A key foundational step in supporting stablecoin payments for...