Briefly describe your issue: I’ve noticed i have over 200 BAT tokens and so i decided to register an account on uphold to send those tokens to that account, after registering and verifying account with Brave Rewards - those tokens disappeared.
What Operating System and Brave version are you using? Latest windows 10, Brave 1.86.142
Who is your verified custodian or self-custody? UpHold
Are you in a supported region? Yes
Is it possible to get those tokens back or that was somehow my fault?
Where?
On a Rewards profile that was never connected to anything?
No such tokens exist. This is what I’m a bit confused about. Years ago we were able to earn and accrue BAT that would remain in the browser. This was later referred to as vBAT.
This ended back at the end of 2023. Everyone was warned to either tip creators or hurry and link to something like Uphold or that vBAT would be gone. Examples are:
To circle back around, the vBAT was removed. No BAT total would be displayed at all. So unless you were on some very old version of Brave from 2023 and just now finally updated, you wouldn’t have even seen these tokens you’re speaking of.
If you’re saying it was to a payout account, like it had previously been connected to Gemini or Uphold, then those tokens would be in those accounts and Brave has nothing to do with it. You would need to check on the connected accounts to see what happened.
Where?
It was shown after opening the Brave Rewards popup next to the search bar
On a Rewards profile that was never connected to anything?
On.. not even profile? I didnt really verify/authorize any account to tokens earlier, today was my first time so those maybe were accumulating locally or something?
To circle back around, the vBAT was removed. No BAT total would be displayed at all. So unless you were on some very old version of Brave from 2023 and just now finally updated, you wouldn’t have even seen these tokens you’re speaking of.
I have no idea what could happen then, could be my bad due to not installing clear brave for whole time, every time i format my pc i’d move most of brave files to cloud and then move them back to pc after format to dont lose settings and other data - maybe it somehow glitched that Rewards window? idk
Thanks for answer and explaining that to me anyway!
Yeah, it’s possible you kept things kind of visible in the browser even after the functionality had been removed. It’s weird if so.
Back when vBAT was a thing it would have accumulated in the browser as part of your Rewards profile. Then when you connected to Uphold or whichever, it would go to 0 and it would be sent to Uphold in the following payout period.
So it going to 0 after connecting is normal. But since vBAT was ended years ago, it would not be expected for you to receive it as a payout. What ads you see via Rewards after connecting should start earning you BAT.
Or maybe instead of it being tokens, you’re referring to the ads viewed counter? If so, that also makes sense as you can’t earn BAT until after you connect to a custodial account. So ads viewed would go to 0 and it starts accumulating for what you see after. This is because it’s now counting what you are being paid to see.
Brave used to pay us for every ad seen, regardless of where the ad was from. They were able to do this because they set aside a growth fund from when they did their initial token offerings. They used that fund to send extra bonuses to people and also to pay everyone for house ads.
In 2024, that fund was used up. The result is that Brave has stopped paying us when we view house ads. We now only are paid for ads that Brave is paid to show us.
If you’re not familiar with the term, house ads are the ads about Brave’s own products and services. So their surveys, advertising about VPN or Leo, Wallet, etc will pay 0 BAT.
When we see those ads, it will not increase the ads viewed counter. The ads viewed counter will only increase if we have seen an ad that we get paid to see.