Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?(linkedin.com)
linkedin.com
Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/could-cryptocurrency-kill-online-advertising-carl-whalley/
68 comments
Advertising will never go away. You pay for cable, yet cable still has ads. Micropayments could potentially be adopted as a short-term alternative, but if it were ever to become the status quo, publishers would just start adding advertisements on top. Then we'd have a system where we both pay money directly, and also have ads, which would be worse.
The number one reason I dont pay for cable, but I do pay for Amazon prime video and I dont get adverts there, I assume Netflix is the same. If I was paying £50 a month for sky TV I would be annoyed at advertising being shown to me. I put up with adverts on free to air TV and am happy to pay a licence fee to the BBC for advert free television and radio. It's possible to provide a service that charges for access and doesn't show adverts as these options prove, however greedy media firms want to have their cake and to eat it.
It doesn’t take that much machine learning to identify an ad and if micro payments were built into the browser they could be trivially tuned to only award payments on non-advertisers.
You can participate with this now using Brave, a Chromium-based browser that uses cryptocurrency-based micropayments to pay for content while blocking adds: https://brave.com
This wouldn't solve the problem is payment is required up front for the content.
Ads make content available to people with no money to spend. Restricting content to those who can pay, instead of paying by ad placement, is only going to further the divide between social classes.
>It's just wasted cycles because of the economics of the damn thing.
I think a lot of people miss that mining is zero sum when over the threshold that the network needs.
For example if mining hardware costs dropped by one half, people catch up and mine with twice as much computing power, the network increases the difficulty of mining by two, and the same amount of bitcoin is distributed and secured as was before the hardware innovation. You aren't mining more 'efficiently' with advances in computing power at the large scale.
I think a lot of people miss that mining is zero sum when over the threshold that the network needs.
For example if mining hardware costs dropped by one half, people catch up and mine with twice as much computing power, the network increases the difficulty of mining by two, and the same amount of bitcoin is distributed and secured as was before the hardware innovation. You aren't mining more 'efficiently' with advances in computing power at the large scale.
But the trust in the system increases.
By your logic we would need only one computer mining. It always takes 10 minutes (or so) anyway...
You do need a threshold, but I would argue the main risks to trust beyond that are in mining consolidation into powerful blocks, forks, etc.
Nobody would mine bitcoin in the browser in their right mind, it's a waste of resources. You would choose one of the coins made specifically for CPU/GPU mining only, no ASICs.
Mining doesn't have to be a cost efficient use of cpu cycles for the person browsing for this to catch on, it just needs to be a more cost efficient use of bandwidth and server power for the entity serving the ads.
Bitcoins are the consistently valuable and liquid coin, therefore it can make sense to serve bitcoin mining js.
Bitcoins are the consistently valuable and liquid coin, therefore it can make sense to serve bitcoin mining js.
It will never be, and indeed nobody has bothered to make a bitcoin minibg js.
Why? Because each desktop CPU would only yield 20-30 megahashes per second, less if you don't want to slow the user's computer to a crawl. A server would need to manage millions of clients just to match a single ASIC miner which has efficiency rated in terahashes. And that amount of hash power would only return about 30 dollars in bitcoin on a good day.
This is why all javascript miners target Monero and the latter was often criticised for having a CPU-friendly PoW because this is just asking for botnets to form.
Why? Because each desktop CPU would only yield 20-30 megahashes per second, less if you don't want to slow the user's computer to a crawl. A server would need to manage millions of clients just to match a single ASIC miner which has efficiency rated in terahashes. And that amount of hash power would only return about 30 dollars in bitcoin on a good day.
This is why all javascript miners target Monero and the latter was often criticised for having a CPU-friendly PoW because this is just asking for botnets to form.
If this ever catches on, i have even more reason to disable all javascript while browsing on my laptop and on battery.
As it is javascript is the number one reason for shit battery life, I don't want to make that even worse than the days of flash which its rapidly already become today.
As it is javascript is the number one reason for shit battery life, I don't want to make that even worse than the days of flash which its rapidly already become today.
until you hit SPA sites that need javascript to work.
That would be avoidable until I'm back on power.
Fundamentally the issue here is energy consumption while on battery. Without a way to say: a site can use N% of battery and then hard cap the usage down to a trickle and alerting the site that the user has limited energy resources available, I think this is a non starter.
Similar to when you are on LTE you don't want to use up limited bandwidth for say 4k video and want to say: you know what, I'll deal with this later and not go over my monthly allocation, the same applies here.
Is that view that unreasonable?
Fundamentally the issue here is energy consumption while on battery. Without a way to say: a site can use N% of battery and then hard cap the usage down to a trickle and alerting the site that the user has limited energy resources available, I think this is a non starter.
Similar to when you are on LTE you don't want to use up limited bandwidth for say 4k video and want to say: you know what, I'll deal with this later and not go over my monthly allocation, the same applies here.
Is that view that unreasonable?
Of course not, but they can mine other coins that are more asic resistant.
> What fundamental good does spreading any PoW to millions or billions of devices accomplish? Nothing.
Well, if the owners of those devices control the mining they're doing, then it secures the network by preventing a 51% attack from any single miner with enough power. But in this case, only the website operator benefits by not having to pay for electricity.
Well, if the owners of those devices control the mining they're doing, then it secures the network by preventing a 51% attack from any single miner with enough power. But in this case, only the website operator benefits by not having to pay for electricity.
Can someone explain briefly how this works? I was under the assumption that you need to download the blockchain to be able to mine. Or in-browser mining just takes stabs in the dark?
Mining is typically something like:
Hash(nonce + Hash(chain[including with new transactions])) < value.
So in some sense you need the chain but you can pass Hash(chain) to a client and let that just increase nonce and hash it.
Without synchronisation the found block might be for a stale chain but if you're using someone else's power you don't care, and the nature of distribution here means it's likely to be fresh anyway in the unlikely chance something is found.
Hash(nonce + Hash(chain[including with new transactions])) < value.
So in some sense you need the chain but you can pass Hash(chain) to a client and let that just increase nonce and hash it.
Without synchronisation the found block might be for a stale chain but if you're using someone else's power you don't care, and the nature of distribution here means it's likely to be fresh anyway in the unlikely chance something is found.
For anyone who was thinking, like me, "If that formula is correct, couldn't you precompute hashes and then subtract Hash(chain) to get the desired nonce", it's more like
Hash(nonce + 2^256 * Hash(chain[including with new transactions])) < value
Still an oversimplification, of course.
Hash(nonce + 2^256 * Hash(chain[including with new transactions])) < value
Still an oversimplification, of course.
You don’t need to download the whole block chain in order to do mining. You just need to know a reasonable starting point.
You only need currently open transactions, a hash from the last block and a nonce.
Mining is just running a dumb hash algorithm over and over. The website would provide the package of data to hash, the browser would start hashing, which could even be done offline. If the browser solves the block, the client sends the solution back to the server. The orchestration and blockchain access is handled behind the scenes by the server.
This article's premise is about how we are on the edge of new disruption. They seem to think it's all been done rather than we are now sitting on innovations that require an unwritten playbook. Kinda like google, smart phones, or Amazon/eBay in the beginning. The talent pool is small again and specialized. The story is far from written.
Never gonna work. The publishers will simply add advertising again at some point so they're gonna reap double benefits.
These people need to care for pigs. Or better yet, go homeless and dig for peach pits in a dumpster.
They won't ever learn.
These people need to care for pigs. Or better yet, go homeless and dig for peach pits in a dumpster.
They won't ever learn.
No. It's a bottom-feeder thing and doesn't generate that much revenue anyway.
Someone did the math on this, right? I thought the amount of revenue generated was a complete pittance.
More likely, this is just something sites start doing on top of advertising.
More likely, this is just something sites start doing on top of advertising.
They did the last few times it was attempted.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=javascript%20miner&sort=byPopu...
There's this great blurb:
We're a bit saddened to see that some of our customers integrate Coinhive into their pages without disclosing to their users what's going on, let alone asking for their permission. We believe there's so much more potential for our solution, but we have to be respectful to our end users.
https://coinhive.com/blog/status-report
It'd be awesome if someone did a comprehensive breakdown. If you scale this up to remove ads from 10% of the net or 30%, does it stay valuable with that mining power added to a single coin? Or does this business model require the continued pump and dump of worthless coins? What kind of energy and workload is this putting on user machines (in many cases without permission)?
If I run across a site that is mining without notice and permission, I'll never visit again, as best as I can. I don't want to support that. Hosting websites is relatively cheap, if companies weren't writing such bloated software, their costs would be much lower. Fix that first without adding more junk to the tech community, please.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=javascript%20miner&sort=byPopu...
There's this great blurb:
We're a bit saddened to see that some of our customers integrate Coinhive into their pages without disclosing to their users what's going on, let alone asking for their permission. We believe there's so much more potential for our solution, but we have to be respectful to our end users.
https://coinhive.com/blog/status-report
It'd be awesome if someone did a comprehensive breakdown. If you scale this up to remove ads from 10% of the net or 30%, does it stay valuable with that mining power added to a single coin? Or does this business model require the continued pump and dump of worthless coins? What kind of energy and workload is this putting on user machines (in many cases without permission)?
If I run across a site that is mining without notice and permission, I'll never visit again, as best as I can. I don't want to support that. Hosting websites is relatively cheap, if companies weren't writing such bloated software, their costs would be much lower. Fix that first without adding more junk to the tech community, please.
Yea, the problem is the debt-based economy leading to things like the ad bubble in the first place. Mining is a process leading to a block reward too, and obviously typically as hashrate increases the difficulty increases too.
Advertising is only valuable when the user is engaged with the device. It's a very poor model for mining. Why not:
1. Sell compute when people aren't using their machines and split the spoils (not actually profitable for people who pay their own electric bills, but you don't have to say that)
2. Just create malware miners that run all the time.
1. Sell compute when people aren't using their machines and split the spoils (not actually profitable for people who pay their own electric bills, but you don't have to say that)
2. Just create malware miners that run all the time.
Revenue sources are rarely killed, usually supplemented. The only way to kill online advertising is if it stops being profitable for advertisers.
Like others have mentioned, the economics are not good, mining is too competitive to be done on commodity hardware. Consider that over half of browsing now happens on mobile, and it becomes clear that very few people can participate.
That's not actually true - some coins are designed to be used on "commodity hardware". Monero is one, and it's what Coinbase uses.
Last I counted, my estimate on profitability was 0.006 cents / computer / minute.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/62m5mu/eli5_why_can...
Last I counted, my estimate on profitability was 0.006 cents / computer / minute.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/62m5mu/eli5_why_can...
In what way does Coinbase use Monero?
I think they meant Coinhive.
https://coinhive.com
Monero's PoW relies on native AES instructions to be efficient on PCs with recent Intel/AMD CPUs, but remains very inefficient on mobile and older desktop CPUs.
Who cares if it's not economical on commodity hardware, be it a smartphone or not. If I have a website that is visited by enough people to mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, while at the same time the cost of hosting the site is less than what is earned, what does it matter if the mining power is not efficient? If I care more about money than about environment, it's a good business model. But you probably need a lot of visitors for that, and I have no idea if it works out.
mine me a (part of a) bitcoin,
To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.
To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.
Profitability doesn't matter if you're not paying costs but getting the income.
It does matter if you are: making pennies (Bitcoin on commodity machines is this way), are turning away users, or are using it instead of advertising.
There's also the bit about stability, you might have a business model that's profitable one month or worthless the next. Who wants that risk?
There's also the bit about stability, you might have a business model that's profitable one month or worthless the next. Who wants that risk?
I believe the unprofitability is such that it can't even pay the expenses of serving the pages. Even if it could though, why would you opt for something that barely allows you to survive, rather than make a killing for all the value you are clearly providing?
They wouldn't be using Bitcoin, they'd use Monero.
You could have a hundred billion smartphones mining Bitcoin via you website and you wouldn't make a single dollar from it.
> Hey, we spent a good fortune to make this site run on all devices, responsive and usable. Lets slow it down to mine *coin, we'll be able to make dozens, DOZENS !!
Depends on the traffic of the website and how long the visitors stay on it.
According to coinwarz you can make $5.1 for 24 hours of mining on CPU/GPU, but realistically (for an average visitor) probably closer to $1/24hrs. If we take Reddit, which has 13 minutes average visit, probably between 5M and 50M daily visits.
That's $45K - $451K daily revenue.
That's probably more than their ad revenue.
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/reddit-stats/
According to coinwarz you can make $5.1 for 24 hours of mining on CPU/GPU, but realistically (for an average visitor) probably closer to $1/24hrs. If we take Reddit, which has 13 minutes average visit, probably between 5M and 50M daily visits.
That's $45K - $451K daily revenue.
That's probably more than their ad revenue.
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/reddit-stats/
No. It user experience and so conversion rate.
It also kills battery life and therefore everything on the planet
As I've said before, when a headline asks a question, the answer is almost certainly "No."
Url changed from https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/10/22/1839226/could-crypt..., which points to this.
It's an interesting idea but I don't trust that websites will use "a little bit of my CPU" to mine cryptocurrencies. All they have to do is increase a number somewhere to earn more money which is too tempting.
If people complain they'll just do it very slowly.
If people complain they'll just do it very slowly.
You mean all that slow down when I visit Mashable isn't from generating crypto coins?
Although outraged by the idea at first, I have to say that there are some benefits here:
0. This starves the advertising industry, which has insatiable apatite for private information, and questionable practices of obtaining it.
1. Payment is done using only CPU power and you electric bill which are private, and the process itself could be made secure and efficient by incorporating it into browsers.
2. Sites no longer have to trick you or your ad blocker into watching something you don't want to watch (or clicking on it). Instead, they are motivated to keep you on their site longer. It's not perfect, and trickery still might be involved, but it still seems like a better motivation. Heck, some sites might even try to keep you by producing solid content.
3. Journalists get an income source without any political strings attached, they don't have to worry about writing something bad about some major advertiser.
However, I'm really not sure about the economics of all of this. How many CPU cycles does it take to replace a single ad?
Plus, wasting all of those CPU cycles on mining produces nothing of actual value. I'd much rather auction off some of my CPU time to the highest bidder or contribute it to some worthy cause.
0. This starves the advertising industry, which has insatiable apatite for private information, and questionable practices of obtaining it.
1. Payment is done using only CPU power and you electric bill which are private, and the process itself could be made secure and efficient by incorporating it into browsers.
2. Sites no longer have to trick you or your ad blocker into watching something you don't want to watch (or clicking on it). Instead, they are motivated to keep you on their site longer. It's not perfect, and trickery still might be involved, but it still seems like a better motivation. Heck, some sites might even try to keep you by producing solid content.
3. Journalists get an income source without any political strings attached, they don't have to worry about writing something bad about some major advertiser.
However, I'm really not sure about the economics of all of this. How many CPU cycles does it take to replace a single ad?
Plus, wasting all of those CPU cycles on mining produces nothing of actual value. I'd much rather auction off some of my CPU time to the highest bidder or contribute it to some worthy cause.
> 1. Payment is done using only CPU power and you electric bill which are private, and the process itself could be made secure and efficient by incorporating it into browsers.
Not really private... my electric meter broadcasts my power consumption in plain text on the 900MHz ISM band every minute... I used this program to read the meters of all my neighbors: https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr ... You probably also can buy the data from the power companies...
Not really private... my electric meter broadcasts my power consumption in plain text on the 900MHz ISM band every minute... I used this program to read the meters of all my neighbors: https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr ... You probably also can buy the data from the power companies...
Ok, so it's not 100% private. But still, no one knows who you've contributed to, and how much. Heck, no one even knows whether you've contributed anything at all; maybe you just ran your washing machine.
As far as passing money between people goes, it's more private than giving someone cash in a back alley.
As far as passing money between people goes, it's more private than giving someone cash in a back alley.
I think this would be more beneficial if we thought of it as distributed computing, rather than just cryptocurrency mining. Look at projects like BOINC, and imagine for a moment that those tasks could run in a web browser without slowing things down to a crawl.
Sure it's less efficient and the tasks need to be broken down into much smaller chunks, but at least this way your spare CPU power could be auctioned off to some more useful purpose. What if instead of an ad space, you're running protein folding simulations, or rendering frames for a small art studio's film project? I'd gladly donate my spare CPU cycles for those kinds of projects on purpose. I think there's a market for this kind of thing, and I'd like to see more experimentation.
Sure it's less efficient and the tasks need to be broken down into much smaller chunks, but at least this way your spare CPU power could be auctioned off to some more useful purpose. What if instead of an ad space, you're running protein folding simulations, or rendering frames for a small art studio's film project? I'd gladly donate my spare CPU cycles for those kinds of projects on purpose. I think there's a market for this kind of thing, and I'd like to see more experimentation.
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Never because if everyone adopted this the difficulty rating would go up by a factor of everyone.
Currently it will take you two years of one the newer computers running constantly to even meet half of the min payout on coinhive.
The more people the greater the difficulity. Lose-lose for everyone.
Ads are great. The current trend against them is shortsighted. Without ads we would be paying for content in walled gardens with less share-ability. Content would he hoarded and tokenized as opposited to widely shared.
Out of the 60 top thread would you micropay to read them all? No but someone does for each one and writes a summary in the comments. Lose-lose because the site gets less money/traffic the readers rely on secondhand information and no one is better off aside from the micropayment provider who takes a cut.
Currently it will take you two years of one the newer computers running constantly to even meet half of the min payout on coinhive.
The more people the greater the difficulity. Lose-lose for everyone.
Ads are great. The current trend against them is shortsighted. Without ads we would be paying for content in walled gardens with less share-ability. Content would he hoarded and tokenized as opposited to widely shared.
Out of the 60 top thread would you micropay to read them all? No but someone does for each one and writes a summary in the comments. Lose-lose because the site gets less money/traffic the readers rely on secondhand information and no one is better off aside from the micropayment provider who takes a cut.
I'm surprised I even have to spell this out for people, but here goes:
Mining stops the double spend problem just like market makers solve the liquidity problem: A little bit is great, but at scale it's divorced from the public good it provides. We don't need the amount of mining that is going on in Bitcoin right now. It's just wasted cycles because of the economics of the damn thing.
What fundamental good does spreading any PoW to millions or billions of devices accomplish? Nothing. That is why cryptocurrency mining will never take over advertising.
What should take over advertising (if anything) is micropayments built into the browser. Maybe with some sort of probabilistic or web-of-trust mechanism on top to prevent the bookkeeping burden from overtaking the payment amount.
The problem with advertising is that it rots peoples minds and makes certain classes of goods compete on brand instead of competing on quality.