Which is not chrome and still has ads...(Ironically).

The issue here is the core model is broken (misaligned incentives). That's not something you are going to fix with a github "downstream". A token system could help but it's easy to imagine ways that could be gamed, if not implemented well.

Ads are the main business model of browsers.

If search ads are blocked on search engines, then there is no revenue for the browser. It's that simple (on top of that Brave has other revenues, but the majority is search ads).

So it's a game of hoping that the majority won't change the default.

This is the main reason Brave does not block search ads specifically by default, but still block the other ads. Blocking the other ads there are no consequences, since anyway this revenue is not shared back to the browser.

This is why the business model of Brave is cynical.

-> It's the same model as AdBlock and the "Acceptable Ads" (block all ads, except the acceptable ads, unless you disallow them)