Testing In-Browser Cyptocurrency Miner Here To Cover Costs

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Having only been recently conceptualized and seen in the wild for about a week, javascript based cyptocurrency miners are a new trend that offers a way for websites to potentially cover their operating costs without the need for advertisements. The biggest of the six major platforms to enter this market is called Coin-Hive.

Unlike traditional mining, Coin-Hive's miner runs within a web-browser through JavaScript and uses only CPU processing power. While CPU mining is far less efficient than mining through a graphics card, almost any PC or smartphone is capable of safely CPU mining without expensive parts, extra cooling mechanisms, or generating excess heat/noise.

I think regardless of the safety of it that users should have the ability to opt-out of having this new script running. This is why I'll have a clear toggle button for it once it's up. Not everyone has something like uBlock Origin or Noscript installed for controlling which scripts run in their browsers and want everyone to have a choice. And no, I'll never ask anyone to purposefully turn off their plugins to allow for this to run. In fact I fully expect for the majority of people to have it blocked by default through a combination of browser plugins and internet gateway products. I've also taken precautions to make sure our version of the script will not 'stack' and cause it to run multiple times if you have more than one CWCki Club tab open.

Expecting many other sites to start experimenting with this as well but would like to be one of the earlier adopters and roll this out sooner rather than later. I have the needed script written, tested, and working but wanted to make sure everyone got a heads up here. Likewise please use this thread to pitch any ideas or questions you may have about it.

More info: https://coin-hive.com

FAQs

• You put WHAT on my computer?

- While the word phrase 'coin miner' typically refers to a separate application, Coin-Hive involves no files and will not install nor run extra processes on your local device. Everything runs within your web-browser's main parent process.

• Is this safe for my PC/phone/tablet?

- Yes, this will not strain your device's resources unlike graphics-card cyprocurrency mining might. Additionally I've purposeful included a throttle with how CWCki Club's script is written. This throttle cuts the maximum CPU usage it can consume to 20%. While many sites have implemented 90% throttles or no throttle controls, I'd like to start low and monitor results.

Coin-Hive miner running within my web-browser at 20% throttle
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• What about any remote network connections?

- Coin-Hive will create one extra network connection from your computer to the main coin-hive.com website during your visit to any website running their script. Many internet gateway security products including Webroot and the paid version of Malwarebytes will block these connections due to Coin-Hive scripts being popularized by bruteforce bots who insert them into unwilling compromised websites. Please feel free to keep this connection blocked or add your favorite websites running Coin-Hive as exemptions.

• How much money you expecting boy-o?

- Not much. I ran it for one minute last night with only my own PC and generated .00000170 Monero. If half our unique non-bot daily visitors do not disable the script and spend 10min a day browsing we would pull a bit over half a dollar a day at the current Monero to USD conversion rate. Keep in mind this is with a 20% max throttle. Site would become self-sufficient at high percentages.

• Glaive is jewing out, REEEEEEEE-

- When I started this site with @Hellblazer and @Liquid Squirtle one of the first things I promised is that we'd never have a paywall nor shake folks down for tugboat money. We still do not need any money to this day to stay afloat. I do not currently collect any form of cyptocurrency and donated all the coins I had to a different forum about two years ago. So this is not my way of buying into any particular coin. Instead I'm excited by this new project and some of the creative possibilities of it (ability to tally up user's contributions individually and offer some type of cutesy forum reward system) all without any additional exposed risk. If this route is taken users could earn 'tugboat' points and exchange them for things like username banners or site trophies. No set plans for anything like that yet but just showing how this system in itself can help develop online communities beyond the financial aspect.

 

We live now fam.



The Tugboat Miner's status is conveniently displayed at the bottom of the homepage's sidebar. As mentioned, this will give you full control of whether you'd like to have the Coin-Hive CPU miner run while you've got a homepage tab open. Note that it runs on ONLY the homepage. This is by design. If you don't mind this minimal 20% CPU script running, leaving a CWCki Club homepage tab open in your browser is greatly appreciated. (Easy for me since I usually leave PC on 24/7 anyway).

I'll let you guys know how much we've collected after letting the miner run for a week and we'll go from there.

 

1 Monero currently equals 90 USD. As mentioned, we'd not cover our costs completely mining at only a 20% throttle. At around 60% I think we'd come close to breaking even though. I will have a much better idea after this test week passes so that we have a baseline longer than one minute to forecast off of. Our operating costs as a whole are low though.

 

I think one of the best parts of this setup is that nothing really needs to be asked of anyone to help. It's going to run on our homepage by default and people will hit that for at least a few seconds. I'd feel uncomfortable having it run across all pages unless the toggle function could be saved in user preferences.

But to answer straightly, if you already leave a PC powered on during the day, having a tab open to the CWCki Club homepage helps.

Depending on exactly what kind of AV product you are running the results still may vary. However I've just now made a cheeky modification to how the base Coin Hive code is read which should evade some false positive verdicts. Exceptions may still be products pushed as 'internet security' gateway level guff like Webroot and BullGuard.

I would never ask anyone to make full blanket exemptions across an entire site in their AV software no matter how overly spastic I think it is. However if you can exempt the single local path/file it's complaining about I can vouch that's safe. Should point to something in your AppData\Local\Your Browser path.

Or it's simply bitching about a connection to coin-hive.com which I can't control (yet).

 

Miner went offline early yesterday morning because Coin-Hive decided to change their domain name. And even though they are forwarding traffic to the new domain this change broke our Miner because of the way our setup is customized to avoid Anti-Virus detections.

Got confirmation that Anti-Virus warnings went away after the custom edits, so I'd like to keep those in place.

Will fix either late tonight or tomorrow.

This is what you are seeing right now in a Chrome-based browser correct? I get resolution issues with that image on a few weird browsers and Chrome works intermittently, if it's an issue after the fix I'll just scrap the image and keep only text/button.

 

Confirming maintainance is complete and the Tugboat miner is back in business.

Likewise I fixed some of the position issues of the miner button within the sidebar that was affecting a few browsers.

I'll play with it when I get back from my business trip as well as other possible tweaks. Might make the stop button's default value be off rather than on.

 

I get the same broken image link recently.