Thoughts on “illegal” Mining

Don't criticize what you can't understand - Bob Dylan

I am curious. And I always was and will be. Therefore I am interested in new technology and speculating about the future. So normally I am quite up to date with (web-)technology. This is why I am on Steemit.

But this one time I was not only an early adopter/enthusiast. I was on board in mere minutes. Therefore I can proudly say I am an expert on the topic of browsermining.

What’s Bowsermining?

Normally websites display ads provided by ad networks to fund there operations. Browsermining is the term I invented to describe the concept of users mining cryptocurrencies for the website´s hoster, while visiting a website to fund it. One service who provides an drop-in solution is CoinHive.

So why is that any better than ads?

It is not. It is just a new technology that can be better for the user when used right. Most importantly it can be used without tracking the user or granting third party technologies access to your page. So browsermining can be used…

• to fund a website independent from third parties.
• while allowing users to stay fully private and anonymous.
• to make a website run more performant than if it would be filled with ads.
• without a backend. This is important for decentralized web3-applications, for example if they are hosted on IPFS (There is no working implementation yet though.)

Some ruin everything

But as usual there are some people that don’t care about the users wellbeing and do nether limit the amount of computational power that is used for mining, not inform the user about what they do.

Because of this Browsermining is often seen as some kind of “hack” by less technical people.

But it is not!

Therefore I want to distinguish between morally “right” (legal) and morally “wrong” (illegal) mining.

Legal Browsermining

• Happens with the users consent
• Happens with the users knowledge
• Uses only a fraction of available computational power

Illegal Browsermining

• Happens without the user’s consent or
• Happens without the users knowledge or
• Uses a huge part of the available computing power

Outro

I hope I was able to inform you about this technology and why I think it is better than it’s reputation.