There are a number of other crypto coins that can be mined via the browser, most notably Nimiq which uses an algorithm (Argon2d) that is ASIC resistant meaning in theory it should be even more profitable for normal day users without high end GPU systems to mine.
Nimiq itself is making some pretty interesting tech implementations such as being written ground up in Javascript and rewriting core parts in Rust so it will run in the browser via web assembly. Their code base is worth checking out: https://github.com/nimiq-network/core
While the paper prominently mentions Monero as an example of browser-based mining, the first part of the analysis is independent of specific cryptocurrencies because it looks for heavy wasm usages. (The second part of the analysis is specifically targeted to Coinhive as it had the largest share, however.)
im shopping around for ideas to implement with browsercoin.com and reading this gives me some interesting perspectives.
first im not interested in Proof-of-Work or usage of blockchain at all...sort of like with what CoinHive and other browser based JS miners do...once you realize these mining activity really is just to add a level of authenticity and verification to a transaction with the ultimate goal of having a completely auditable trail going back to the genesis block. This exact property can be built using Datomic where I can achieve more or less an unalterable auditable logo of all transaction made to the database even deletes without worrying about any of the mining rewards centralized by pools that essentially dwarf and skew the wealth. The only difference being that Datomic runs on some seriously secure corporate infrastructure, the miners being Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Fujitsu, Samsung all regulated and still answering to the civic organs of democratic economies instead of unknown nodes with opaque interests without regulation which makes it ripe for disinformation.
what if instead of running some number crunching, you were incentivized to consume a content, use an app? What if then you could use some of those credits earned to distribute to content creators that you really like (sorta like patreon but you "mine/get rewarded" when you complete a task). I see that BAT of Brave Browser tries to do this but is anybody really using Brave instead of their go-to browser....I doubt it....
I had this idea for the longest time of implementing something like this but with instantly verifiable and creditable tasks. Proof-of-Achievement I coined it. But once I realize I'm not building an ICO or cryptofoolery but a grassroots marketplace for task you can do in your browser.
Some scenarios:
Say you want users for your SaaS web app --> boom you got an audience.
Sa you want to get paid for your SaaS/Content/Video/Music --> boom the audience that has "BrowserCoins" can pitch in to support your cause.
The main selling point being that for the miners the reward is immediate, there will be some clever verification methods, but essentially when you complete a task you "mine/rewarded" 10ßC....there came up with a currency symbol on the spot.
Miner (running a browser extension):
1. "hmm...create a profile on somebody's Tinder clone app"
2. *several minutes later*
3. "okay verified email, browser extension says successful"
4. *you receive* 10ßC for a job well done from hnaddict393
hnaddict393 (created the job originally):
1. miner#001 has complete your job titled "awesome dating app needs some love"
2. verifier#091 is checking the quality of your job.
3. verifier#092 is checking the quality of your job.
5. verifier#091 has finished and has approved result.
6. your job has been completed and 10ßC was removed from your account.
verifier#091 (you mine ßCs by verifying the output of a job):
1. verifier#091 has started a verification task.
2. verifier#092 has started a verification task.
3. verifier#093 has started a verification task.
4. verifier#093 has rejected output-reason: "profile looks fake"
5. verifier#092 has accepted output. awaiting your verification.
6. verifier#091 has accepted output. thank you, your verification pool has been credited 2ßC for reaching a consensus within the acceptable time outlined in EULA.
7. verification task has reached a consensus: SUCCESS (2/3)
anyways kinda rambled on there but was just thinking of a proof of concept of some sort based on replacing a PoW with a more meaningful work output.
To coin the classic HN approach, isn't this just Mechanical Turk + a bank account?
Being less reductionist, you could possibly bootstrap the chicken/egg issue of getting task executors / task creators by proxying tasks off Mechanical Turk.
yup. basically near insta-verified rewards and verification. The issue mentioned below of someone botting can be solved by having "oracles" or trusted advisors with a score to maintain.
> Being less reductionist, you could possibly bootstrap the chicken/egg issue of getting task executors / task creators by proxying tasks off Mechanical Turk.
How do you protect the system from someone generating 1000 nodes as bots verifying those profiles at random and reaching consensus ? No verification is really ever done.
good point, first is to make it expensive or nullify multiple bot efforts. that will take a real life KYC type of verification. collusion is still a possibility.
There is an old github repo on bitcoin browser mining from the era before coinhive. I remember it had something about using shaders and webgl to mine with the GPU.
GPUs are just as power hungry as CPUs (keccak/sha3/sha2/cryptonight; it's going to draw more power). Monetizing your user base via any type of proof-of-work at this point is just plain stealing electricity IMHO, unless your user base is an ASIC farm or working some unheard-of cryptocoin with a low mining difficulty.
I ran 16 GPUs on Bitcoin for 18-24 months when it made sense to do so. I pool hopped to game rewards and had failover bitcoind solo nodes for when pools got DDoS'd. There was a time when it made sense, but ultimately GPUs got priced out.
The people who are chasing this dream are quite literally 6 or 7 years late to the profit margin vs. electrical efficiency equation in terms of Bitcoin and maybe 18 months too late for Monero. That's the evolution of all POW mining, electrical efficiency.
I've been looking to experiment with browser mining solutions recently but the offerings are really lacking imo. It seems to be a simple problem (let users mine in exchange for virtual goods ~proportional to the solved hashes) but bar CoinHive I ended up with nothing promising and I can't really justify their 30% cut.
If I did the math right, then if the notebook I typing this comment on mined at 100% CPU load for 1 hour, the payout to the script owner would be equivalent to US$0.00085. For nearly 200 Wh consumed, or 70g CO2 equivalent, or $0.004/kWh. That's two orders of magnitude less than the cost of the energy consumed, supposedly somewhere around 3% efficiency.
I suppose asking for donations/selling subscriptions/products/whatever is more sustainable. Even if 3 users out of 100 agreed to donate/pay the monetary equivalent of 1 kWh (~ $0.140), the site owner would receive more than forcing 100 users to heat the air for one hour and putting 7kg CO2 in the atmosphere.
The web doesn't need browser-based mining. The web needs affordable and convenient microtransactions. With something better than a 0.05 + 5% fee.
I've noticed after browsing crypto stuff the processor often goes to near 100%, presumably javascript mining in the background. Bit of a pain in the neck. Also the Metamask extension seemed to be doing similar so I've had to turn the thing off.
«I don't understand why so many are still blind to these very serious problems...»
Because something that consumes a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the energy consumed by the world is not a "serious" energy problem, no matter what silly comparisons people make, like saying Bitcoin miners consume more than Ireland when it turns out that Ireland consumes so little electricity that it could be supplied by a single hydroelectric plant.
There is also a lot of misinformation being published. For example uninformed journalists claiming that miners in China use coal power, when in fact most are located in the Sichuan province because there is plenty of cheap hydroelectricity over there.
I have studied mining for many years, and IMHO it is so ruthlessly competitive that I see the mining industry moving toward building or buying & retrofitting their own hydro/solar/wind power plants optimized for mining for two reasons. (1) Renewables have now become the cheapest source of energy. And (2) many costs of traditional power plants can be avoided when you design a power source specifically for mining (eg. a solar plant can avoid having to convert and transport AC currents on long distance and instead produce DC for immediate consumption by nearby equipment.) If mining ever gets to that point of large scale renewables power plants optimized for mining, we will probably see many net beneficial side-effects, such as the increased production of solar panels for miners causing the cost of solar to decrease for the rest of the world.
Finally, if mining ever gets so profitable that it warrants consuming much more than one percent of the world's production of electricity, then it means something would have pushed the value of cryptocurrencies very high. This something can only be a major event, such as the world realizing cryptocurrencies have enormous social and economic benefits. (I can't see speculation alone pushing and maintaining high prices long enough to matter.)
If, on the other hand, cryptocurrencies turn out to be mostly useless, then their value will remain low, and miners will never consume excessive amounts of energy.
You are basically worried about a non-problem. Miners will only use very large amounts of energy if cryptocurrencies are actually very useful for society, ie. if pros exceeds cons.
It seems to me the problem its solving isn't efficiently 'mining' the currency, its efficiently transferring small amounts of money. If there was a way a website could present a button I could use to flip them a penny (without a complicated setup or previous relationship with them) on my way thru if I like the content, I'd smash that thing all day long.
The telling thing is that people are seriously considering a system that wastes 97% of the money in the tiny transaction to easily transfer the 3%.
Stealth browser-mining lets everyone skip all the genuine attempts at transferring value and go straight to microscams.
Edit: hoisted body of comment: "Unsolved, difficult problems of micropayments"
- pay before viewing: how do you know that the thing you're paying for is the thing that you're expecting? What if it's a rickroll or goatse?
- so do you give refunds a la steam?
- pay and adverts: double-dipping is very annoying
- pay and adverts: how do you know who you're paying? A page appears with a micropayment request, but how do you know you've not just paid the advertiser to view their ad?
- pay and frame: can you have multiple payees per displayed page? (this has good and bad ideas)
- pay and popups: it's going to be like those notification or app install modals, yet another annoyance for people to bounce off
- pay limits: contactless has a £30 limit here. Would you have the same payment system suitable for $.01 payments and $1000 payments? How easy is it to trick people into paying over the odds (see refunds)?
- pay and censors: who's excluded from the payment system? Why?
Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams.
Part 2: business model problems!
- getting money into the system is plagued by usual fraud problems of card TX for pure digital goods
- nobody wants to build a federated system; everyone wants to build a Play/Apple/Steam store where they take 30%
- winner-take-all effects are strong
- Play store et al already exist, why not use that?
- Free substitute goods are just a click away
- Consumers will pirate anything no matter how cheap the original is
- No real consumer demand for micropayments
=> lemma from previous 3 items: market for online goods is efficient enough to drive all marginal prices to zero
- existing problem of the play store letting your kid spend all the money
- friction: it would be great if you didn't have to repeatedly approve things, such as a micropayment for every page of a webcomic archive. But blanket approval lets bad actors drain the jar or inattentive users waste it and then feel conned
- first most obvious model for making this work is porn, which is inevitably blacklisted by the payment processors, has a worse environment for fraud/chargebacks, and is toxic to VCs (see Patreon and even Craigslist)
- Internet has actually killed previously working micropayment systems such as Minitel, paid ringtones (anyone remember the dark era of Crazy Frog?); surviving ones like premium SMS and phone have a scammy, seedy feel.
- accounting requirements: do you have to pay VAT on that micropayment? do you have to declare it? Is it a federal offence to sell something to an Iranian or North Korean for one cent?
I feel like one of the big issues here is that we're seeing more users visiting websites on their mobile and that means website owners want to monetize from mobile users. Browser-based mining takes a significant toll on mobile battery and excessively increases the temperature of your mobile device, which can lead to other concerns. Mining is also much slower on most mobile devices.
Coinhive themselves suggest against implementing mining for mobile users, but it appears that some people are not so concerned for their users' mobile devices.
26 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 48.5 ms ] threadNimiq itself is making some pretty interesting tech implementations such as being written ground up in Javascript and rewriting core parts in Rust so it will run in the browser via web assembly. Their code base is worth checking out: https://github.com/nimiq-network/core
first im not interested in Proof-of-Work or usage of blockchain at all...sort of like with what CoinHive and other browser based JS miners do...once you realize these mining activity really is just to add a level of authenticity and verification to a transaction with the ultimate goal of having a completely auditable trail going back to the genesis block. This exact property can be built using Datomic where I can achieve more or less an unalterable auditable logo of all transaction made to the database even deletes without worrying about any of the mining rewards centralized by pools that essentially dwarf and skew the wealth. The only difference being that Datomic runs on some seriously secure corporate infrastructure, the miners being Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Fujitsu, Samsung all regulated and still answering to the civic organs of democratic economies instead of unknown nodes with opaque interests without regulation which makes it ripe for disinformation.
what if instead of running some number crunching, you were incentivized to consume a content, use an app? What if then you could use some of those credits earned to distribute to content creators that you really like (sorta like patreon but you "mine/get rewarded" when you complete a task). I see that BAT of Brave Browser tries to do this but is anybody really using Brave instead of their go-to browser....I doubt it....
I had this idea for the longest time of implementing something like this but with instantly verifiable and creditable tasks. Proof-of-Achievement I coined it. But once I realize I'm not building an ICO or cryptofoolery but a grassroots marketplace for task you can do in your browser.
Some scenarios:
Say you want users for your SaaS web app --> boom you got an audience.
Sa you want to get paid for your SaaS/Content/Video/Music --> boom the audience that has "BrowserCoins" can pitch in to support your cause.
The main selling point being that for the miners the reward is immediate, there will be some clever verification methods, but essentially when you complete a task you "mine/rewarded" 10ßC....there came up with a currency symbol on the spot.
Miner (running a browser extension):
hnaddict393 (created the job originally): verifier#091 (you mine ßCs by verifying the output of a job): anyways kinda rambled on there but was just thinking of a proof of concept of some sort based on replacing a PoW with a more meaningful work output.Being less reductionist, you could possibly bootstrap the chicken/egg issue of getting task executors / task creators by proxying tasks off Mechanical Turk.
yup. basically near insta-verified rewards and verification. The issue mentioned below of someone botting can be solved by having "oracles" or trusted advisors with a score to maintain.
> Being less reductionist, you could possibly bootstrap the chicken/egg issue of getting task executors / task creators by proxying tasks off Mechanical Turk.
not sure what you mean by proxy
I ran 16 GPUs on Bitcoin for 18-24 months when it made sense to do so. I pool hopped to game rewards and had failover bitcoind solo nodes for when pools got DDoS'd. There was a time when it made sense, but ultimately GPUs got priced out.
The people who are chasing this dream are quite literally 6 or 7 years late to the profit margin vs. electrical efficiency equation in terms of Bitcoin and maybe 18 months too late for Monero. That's the evolution of all POW mining, electrical efficiency.
I suppose asking for donations/selling subscriptions/products/whatever is more sustainable. Even if 3 users out of 100 agreed to donate/pay the monetary equivalent of 1 kWh (~ $0.140), the site owner would receive more than forcing 100 users to heat the air for one hour and putting 7kg CO2 in the atmosphere.
The web doesn't need browser-based mining. The web needs affordable and convenient microtransactions. With something better than a 0.05 + 5% fee.
Because something that consumes a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the energy consumed by the world is not a "serious" energy problem, no matter what silly comparisons people make, like saying Bitcoin miners consume more than Ireland when it turns out that Ireland consumes so little electricity that it could be supplied by a single hydroelectric plant.
Something that's actually a serious problem would be, for example, the fact the world wastes more energy than it uses every year: https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-dirty-energy-comes-fr...
There is also a lot of misinformation being published. For example uninformed journalists claiming that miners in China use coal power, when in fact most are located in the Sichuan province because there is plenty of cheap hydroelectricity over there.
I have studied mining for many years, and IMHO it is so ruthlessly competitive that I see the mining industry moving toward building or buying & retrofitting their own hydro/solar/wind power plants optimized for mining for two reasons. (1) Renewables have now become the cheapest source of energy. And (2) many costs of traditional power plants can be avoided when you design a power source specifically for mining (eg. a solar plant can avoid having to convert and transport AC currents on long distance and instead produce DC for immediate consumption by nearby equipment.) If mining ever gets to that point of large scale renewables power plants optimized for mining, we will probably see many net beneficial side-effects, such as the increased production of solar panels for miners causing the cost of solar to decrease for the rest of the world.
Finally, if mining ever gets so profitable that it warrants consuming much more than one percent of the world's production of electricity, then it means something would have pushed the value of cryptocurrencies very high. This something can only be a major event, such as the world realizing cryptocurrencies have enormous social and economic benefits. (I can't see speculation alone pushing and maintaining high prices long enough to matter.)
If, on the other hand, cryptocurrencies turn out to be mostly useless, then their value will remain low, and miners will never consume excessive amounts of energy.
You are basically worried about a non-problem. Miners will only use very large amounts of energy if cryptocurrencies are actually very useful for society, ie. if pros exceeds cons.
The telling thing is that people are seriously considering a system that wastes 97% of the money in the tiny transaction to easily transfer the 3%.
Stealth browser-mining lets everyone skip all the genuine attempts at transferring value and go straight to microscams.
Edit: hoisted body of comment: "Unsolved, difficult problems of micropayments"
- pay before viewing: how do you know that the thing you're paying for is the thing that you're expecting? What if it's a rickroll or goatse?
- so do you give refunds a la steam?
- pay and adverts: double-dipping is very annoying
- pay and adverts: how do you know who you're paying? A page appears with a micropayment request, but how do you know you've not just paid the advertiser to view their ad?
- pay and frame: can you have multiple payees per displayed page? (this has good and bad ideas)
- pay and popups: it's going to be like those notification or app install modals, yet another annoyance for people to bounce off
- pay limits: contactless has a £30 limit here. Would you have the same payment system suitable for $.01 payments and $1000 payments? How easy is it to trick people into paying over the odds (see refunds)?
- pay and censors: who's excluded from the payment system? Why?
Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams.
Part 2: business model problems!
- getting money into the system is plagued by usual fraud problems of card TX for pure digital goods
- nobody wants to build a federated system; everyone wants to build a Play/Apple/Steam store where they take 30%
- winner-take-all effects are strong
- Play store et al already exist, why not use that?
- Free substitute goods are just a click away
- Consumers will pirate anything no matter how cheap the original is
- No real consumer demand for micropayments
=> lemma from previous 3 items: market for online goods is efficient enough to drive all marginal prices to zero
- existing problem of the play store letting your kid spend all the money
- friction: it would be great if you didn't have to repeatedly approve things, such as a micropayment for every page of a webcomic archive. But blanket approval lets bad actors drain the jar or inattentive users waste it and then feel conned
- first most obvious model for making this work is porn, which is inevitably blacklisted by the payment processors, has a worse environment for fraud/chargebacks, and is toxic to VCs (see Patreon and even Craigslist)
- Internet has actually killed previously working micropayment systems such as Minitel, paid ringtones (anyone remember the dark era of Crazy Frog?); surviving ones like premium SMS and phone have a scammy, seedy feel.
- accounting requirements: do you have to pay VAT on that micropayment? do you have to declare it? Is it a federal offence to sell something to an Iranian or North Korean for one cent?
Coinhive themselves suggest against implementing mining for mobile users, but it appears that some people are not so concerned for their users' mobile devices.