It's the top of the list because it works so well. I forget it's a different browser most of the time. I was able to turn off everything extraneous that I was concerned about. Brave is also Open Sourced.
I really don't care about crypto stuff. If you do, I can understand why that's a dealbreaker for you. But for me, it doesn't matter at all. I just turn the crypto features off and continue on my way.
It's not about the feature. It's about the people who built the feature. "Sure they sold a car that blows up at 75 mph, but I never drive over 60 so I trust them."
The crypto part is an optional thing, which takes a split second to turn off - thats it. Once its off you are basically running chrome without the google call home, and with a built in adblocker unaffected by manifest v3.
It's also opensource so it's not like theres anything being hidden here.
Maybe take a look at Vivaldi, it's a continuation of the old Opera, with basically the same development team. It's the most user-friendly and configurable option at this moment, they're very responsive to feedback, and are the only organization that doesn't have some horrible privacy violations in the past (maybe excluding Apple, I don't know and don't care, 90% of users on this planet can't run Safari).
Also they are in Norway if you care about that sort of thing.
