Forbes Now Lets You Use Cryptocurrency to Get an Ad-Free Reading Experience

Forbes has, with the help of Unlock, launched a cryptocurrency-powered ad-free experience for its whole website, allowing users to pay a flat fee in ether (ETH) to not see ads on the platform for some time.

An announcement published by Unlock details that Forbes deployed two locks on its website. One offers its users an ad-free experience for a month on Forbes.com, while the other offers the same ad-free experience for a week.

To get the ad-free experience, users will need to use a browser with a cryptocurrency wallet, such as the Opera browser, or a wallet giving them access to decentralized applications, like MetaMask or Coinbase wallet.

A big step for crypto today:

🔒@UnlockProtocol is now live on @Forbes in the crypto section. Check it out and try it!https://t.co/8uLWDRTlRr pic.twitter.com/NNuxHjSbJN

— Peter 'pet3rpan' (@pet3rpan_) December 17, 2019

Unlock details that on Forbes’ cryptocurrency and blockchain section there’s a button letting users pay ether for the ad-free experience. After clicking it, a pop-up window will appear asking for the payment, and once it’s done users receive a non-fungible token ($NFT) representing their ‘membership’. The $NFT can then be transferred or sold on markets like OpenSea.

The blog post notes that Unlock is looking to solve a problem present in today’s attention-driven web. As content creators are rewarded for being able to attract attention users are facing an information overload filled with clickbait, slideshows, and even fake news.

A solution being used are ad-blockers, but these, Unlock adds, don’t fix the incentives problem. Creators are still rewarded for attracting attention, even if most of it uses ad—blockers. Its product, it adds, lets users unlock an ad-free experience using cryptocurrency.

This isn’t the only crypto-powered solution looking to fix today’s web. The Brave browser, led by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, has created a basic attention token ($BAT) to reward both users and content creators on the web. It works by giving users a portion of the revenue using $BAT, and allowing them to distribute these funds to content creators.

The solution is now enabled in over 20 countries, and a wider rollout is expected in the near future. As reported, Brave recently surpassed 10 million monthly active users.

Featured image via Pixabay.