I understand questioning the motives, but does the longevity matter?
I have a ton of bookmarks and some extensions, but those carry over easily across chrome variations. If Brave died next year you could switch back to chromium relatively easily, I think.
I guess, I may be missing something, and would like to know what.
And believe me, if you would have asked me if trusting Microsoft was the safe bet 20 years ago, I would have said you were nuts. But here we are.