On May 23rd, 2023, the popular Web3 browser Brave announced Brave Talk, a new token-gating video call feature. Now users can use non-fungible tokens and Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAPs) for token gated access calls, to create avatars, assign moderator permission, and more.
The new Web3 calling feature is an expansion on the Brave browser’s native Brave Wallet. Brave said that by combining wallet, browser, and video, it has created the “first-ever fully integrated live event platform.”
Brave Talk users with a premium subscription will have access to NFT-gated video calls on any browser using any Web3 wallet. For now, the feature will only be compatible with NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
While other video calling platforms like Google Meet or Zoom rely on passwords to control access, Brave’s video calls utilize Ethereum NFTs and POAPs (NFTs that signify real-life attendance or participation in an event) as the gating system.
To use Web3 Brave Talk users must:
- Go to talk.brave.com
- Select “Host a Web3 Call” option to access the Web3 room (must have a Premium Talk subscription)
- Authenticate account through Web3 crypto wallet
- Select an NFT to use as an avatar during calls
- Choose whether participants need to hold an NFT or be part of a POAP group to enter a call
Brave wrote in its press release that though NFTs and POAPs are the two most common ways to verify authorization, it could expand options in the future. Additional options might allow cryptocurrency to be sent between participants, NFTs from different blockchains, and token gated access to calls based on previous NFT ownership or specific token balances.
What is Brave and why the news matters?
Brave is a free open-source Web3 browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. in 2016. It focuses on privacy, and lets users choose to turn on ads that reward them in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), the company’s native cryptocurrency. BAT can be used within Brave‘s ecosystem to pay content creators and registered websites.
In August 2022, Brave reported more than 57 million monthly active users and a network of over 1.6 million content creators. This is a huge user base, showing that even if the price of BAT is down from it’s all-time high, interest in Brave is growing.
If Brave’s latest token gated feature successfully attracts communities, businesses, creators, and individuals to begin using Web3 video call options instead of traditional Web2 platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, Brave could become a major onboarding ramp to Web3 — more so than it already is.
For now, Brave Talk is a new service and we’ll have to be patient to see if it’s embraced by the Web3 community. But if it’s successful, it would be huge for Brave, and perhaps transformative for the Web3 space as a whole.
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