Pay to surf (PTS) is an online business model which gained popularity in the late 1990’s and experienced a significant decline following the dot-com crash.
This action was officially forbidden per the User's Agreement and strictly regulated, especially among minors, who needed the consent of their parents or legal guardians to use this business model.
However, by late 2001 with the dot-com bubble's collapse,[10] major PTS companies went out of business, as their sole revenue source was internet advertising.
mostly operate on a rewards-based structure where users surf the web or do tasks such as answering marketing email and shopping at specific stores to obtain reward points that can be exchanged for gifts.
[16] Brave also proposed an alternate way of compensation for browsing, as users were given tokens, promised that they will eventually be exchangeable for dollars, operating in a similar manner to cryptocurrency.