Browser suddenly becomes like a freshly installed one

[megaspaz]

From another thread like yours…

Updated Brave and now all saved passwords are gone

Try and see if you didn’t make a new profile accidentally? That’s the only thing that comes to mind… If you are able to recover your password because of this, I’d still suggest using a bookmark manager… It stores in the cloud which gives some people the willies, but you’ll have an extra place to recover bookmarks from unforeseen issues… plus it makes bookmarks available to other browsers/devices you might use… This one is free ($) if you have under 500 bookmarks… so ymmv…

EverSync - Sync bookmarks, backup favorites