Correct, it’s the only option for most, at least by default.
Did you put in the little application that I linked to? If so, likely wouldn’t take too long for them to send out. At one point they were doing it weekly, but it slowed because of the holidays. Things should pick up a lot more here in the first few months of 2025.
They have answered multiple ways on this. Overall they aren’t wanting to make it easy. As was included in posts I linked to:
Long story short, they want more control as a way to prevent bots and fraudsters from easily being able to create things and earn, as it makes abusing the system way too easy.
On top of that, Brave had explained that it costs money to set up the initial connection. So each wallet created/linked would cost. If it was an automatic thing, then that would be a large upfront cost from people who likely aren’t going to maintain it.
So having people apply and then them approving helps to make sure they control costs, reduce fraud, and are able to not overwhelm their systems so that there are no issues on payments getting sent out.