Not only is Brave just Chromium, it doesn't even block ads; it just replaces them with ads that pay worst-person-in-the-world Brendan Eich. And is tied to a dubious cryptocurrency scheme.
The Brave Ads are opt-in, disabled by default. The idea is that they will incentivize users to enabled the proprietary ad notifications by paying those users (minuscule amounts to be fair) every time they view the ad.