Alternate form of revenue for companies?

In our most recent article, we discussed cryptojacking and how you could be a potential victim. However, should cryptojacking be seen as a bad thing? Instead of being shady about mining on a victim’s CPU, what if companies were openly transparent that your CPU was being used to mine - but this would get rid of ads?

History of CryptoJacking

Last September, the popular torrenting website The Pirate Bay was caught running a cryptocurrency mining script on their website. The website was using a miner from Coinhive to mine Monero ($XMR) and was spotted by users when they noticed a difference in their CPU usage. After news got out, The Pirate Bay released a statement in their blog stating the following:

As you may have noticed we are testing a Monero javascript miner.

This is only a test. We really want to get rid of all the ads. But we also need enough money to keep the site running.
Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you want ads or do you want to give away a few of your CPU cycles every time you visit the site?
Of course the mining can be blocked by a normal ad-blocker.

Note :
Initially there was a small typo so all CPU for a client was used. This should be corrected now so only 20-30% should be used.
Also it is restricted to run in one tab only so even if you have 10 tabs oven it will only be running in 1.

Basing it off the blog comments, many users seemed to be fine with this as long as they wouldn’t see any more ads. This would simply be an alternate source of revenue whenever you’re on the website. However, there were outcries from other users as they were not given the choice of running the miner.

Are mining scripts really that bad?

Obviously not every business model involving cryptocurrency mining is flawless. Some websites were under attack for trying to hide it from users, claiming what users don't know won't hurt them. However, if websites were to transition to this business model and be openly transparent about it, there wouldn't be too much of an issue. Allowing users to opt in/opt out would give users the choice of whether or not they want to support their favorite website. If given the choice between donating and giving up a portion of your CPU, most users would choose the latter. Going a step further and allowing users to toggle the throttle would help incentivize the use of miners even more.

Major media outlets like Salon have recently offered it's readers the option to mine cryptocurrency as an alternative to viewing ads. They openly state what happens if you choose to go the mining route - "your computer works a bit harder and uses more electricity than if you were just passively browsing the site with ads." By giving users all the information about what's happening, it helps them become more comfortable with using this technology.

Cheers,
The Blockchain Musketeers

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