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benja123
I made this for the producthunt hackathon because I thought it's an interesting concept. I see a lot of positives to letting people donate to charities through in browser mining, but also a lot of negatives.

Positives 1. I believe that a big reason people don't donate more often is because they can't be bothered. By letting them donate without having to fill out any forms etc. you are reducing the friction which I believe would make it easier for charities to raise money. 2. If the result of this is users keeping a tab of the hosting website open longer it would be a pretty big win for the hosting website as well.

Negatives 1. We are basically asking people to donate their power supply. It would be much more efficient for them to donate directly. 2. It's another website widget...

On the technical side - the backend is written in Elixir, the widget is written in React and the admin dashboard is using Phoenix templates.

maltalex
I like the idea, but I really wish that the mining process itself would produce something useful.

We should really be folding proteins, solving mathematical problems, or simulating complex systems like the atmosphere. Not calculating hashes.

benja123
Thanks for the feedback! I actually completely agree with what you are saying, and I wouldn't rule out using the same type of concept to do something just like that. The only problem I see is you'll still need to find a way to pay for the servers that are serving the end users "jobs". If that could be solved it would be a great thing to do!