It's a browser with built-in cryptocurrency nonsense. That should tell you everything you need to know.
It's a mistake to assume something is nonsense or bad just because crypto is involved. Provided that you can convert it to something usable, it doesn't really matter if you're paid in dollars, BAT or something else.
That's ~400 dollars at current BAT prices ($0.49) or ~1200 dollars at the price BAT was ~1 month ago ($1.50).
It's not a lot, BAT value isn't very stable and I'd make more money with Google Adsense, but this comes from users that block ads anyway. 400 is better than 0.
No, creators did not have to be savvy enough to make their own ERC-20 wallet. We worked with Uphold at the time. Creators could verify with Uphold (a wallet would be created for them), and we would then send Brave's BAT (earmarked for the creator by Brave users) from our own settlement wallet over to the creator.
I like Brave and many other people do. Just look at any of the other HN posts about Brave.
Since I like Brave, from this side of the table it looks like the anti-Brave people come out in full force to try to spew the same old crap and badmouth Brave. At the point it is the tired old crap, which most has been debunked already.
Those that are showing Braves many problems ("badmouth") don't have a stake one way or the other except to warn people.
The only non-compromised Brave users I've come across are mobile, and they are the ones that find using the Firefox add-ons menu to install uBlock origin too complicated. They are unlikely to learn the BAT system.
Neither consider Brave any real threat. Another commenter said "romantic view" - I think that applies here.