Javascript miner as a source of traffic revenue for websites?

[glennmatthew]

Hey Guys,

I've come across this article: http://www.techradar.com/news/pirate-bay-sails-close-to-the-wind-by-using-visitors-cpus-to-mine-cryptocurrency

To summarise for the lazy ones, piratebay has done a 24 hour trial, where they CPU mined Monero with a javascript app executed automatically on website visitors

What do you think, could it be that such js mining apps will one day take over as the main way of monetising website traffic (opposed to adverts)

Let me know what you think!

[CryptoBeefy]

I read this earlier as well. Was surprised TPB dropped it in without any announcements but guess it was a trial and not on all pages. You'd be able to stop it relatively easy by blocking the javascript so not sure how mainstream it will go ... Plus not all common internet sites will care for crypto in its current state so can only see sites like TPB being interested in it.

[Extreme]

I don't see a problem with people doing this as long as a few things are true.
1. The sites tell you that they are mining with your CPU.
2. The sites limit it to a small % of the CPU.
3. Normal ad blockers block it from mining.
4. Don't jam your site with ads AND try to slip in a miner.

With that being said, I do not think mining will outperform normal ad revenue in a direct comparison. Even if a site gets alot of daily hits, the majority of users aren't going to be leaving the browser on that site for a long period of time.

[bitart]

I don't see a problem with people doing this as long as a few things are true.
1. The sites tell you that they are mining with your CPU.
2. The sites limit it to a small % of the CPU.
3. Normal ad blockers block it from mining.
4. Don't jam your site with ads AND try to slip in a miner.

With that being said, I do not think mining will outperform normal ad revenue in a direct comparison. Even if a site gets alot of daily hits, the majority of users aren't going to be leaving the browser on that site for a long period of time.

Sites, especially those like the pirate bay and others are won't tell you what they're doing in the background... and they won't care about your CPU usage. You need antivirus, anti malware, script blocker anyway, if you visit sites like that. If you can block it with a JS blocker, then you'll be fine.
I won't be surprised it this will be widespread in the near future (like the screensavers were in the ancient times searching for signals from the space, using your idle computer's CPU time)

[Mometaskers]

When this news popped on my FB feed I was actually surprised. I haven't visited Piratebay for a long time, where there any announcements? I probably would have agreed to it but if they implemented it without notice I might feel some discomfort. I mean, we were always worried about stuff being loaded into our computers without our knowledge, this might make some uneasy. (Though I assume there was nothing loaded into the PCs).

Still, it would be good way for them to make money. It becomes a two-way street. You go there to check out torrents, they get some Monero. Now if only seeding torrents you've already downloaded would give rewards in some alts. I mean, you already downloaded it, you are not required to seed, at least give people incentives to keep the file up.

[CryptoBeefy]

Thinking about this more, I assume most people who use TPB clock in, download the torrent and close the browser, i'm unsure how much mining they'd actually achieve from this.

[cryptoking710]

So this is just while you are viewing torrents on there site? surely the next step is to sipon some of your cpu power while you are downloading a torrent?? your going to be doing that longer than just looking for a torrent on site.

[Celsiuss]

I saw this miner first on /r/webdev, it looked cool and all, but I don't think this will stay. With a javascript miner, it will go very slow, and the webpage will most likely crash on some devices / browsers. The miner advertises that it can replace normal ads, but with fair ads on a website (a couple of simple banner ads), the ads will be much more profitable than the miner.

[HeRetiK]

The Piratebay was pretty quick to clarify the situation on their blog, once TorrentFreak wrote about it:

https://thepiratebay.org/blog

So far I find it a refreshing alternative to monetization via advertisements, especially for privacy concerned netizens. However I doubt it's quite as profitable as traditional ad-based revenue and is definitely not suitable for mobile devices.

So this is just while you are viewing torrents on there site? surely the next step is to sipon some of your cpu power while you are downloading a torrent?? your going to be doing that longer than just looking for a torrent on site.

This trial was run while viewing torrents on their site. It has nothing to do with whatever BitTorrent client you may be using (and most likely never will).

[emuLOAD]

most people do not even remotely utilize their computational power, and this is a very good method for potentially boosting site revenue, however it must be explicit, and it must not enable itself when on battery-powered devices or when cpu load is above a certain threshold.

[anon4250158]

There was a whole bunch of this going on several years ago- a lot of crypto-related sites had javascript miners that they forced on unsuspecting visitors.  It died out because CPU mining is just not useful for ANY altcoin.  They'd have to have an insane number of visitors to their website that stayed there for significant amounts of time.  I don't think javascript mining will ever replace ads.  I think if people find out, it will lose more customers and their revenue than they would ever make mining.

[bitart]

There was a whole bunch of this going on several years ago- a lot of crypto-related sites had javascript miners that they forced on unsuspecting visitors.  It died out because CPU mining is just not useful for ANY altcoin.  They'd have to have an insane number of visitors to their website that stayed there for significant amounts of time.  I don't think javascript mining will ever replace ads.  I think if people find out, it will lose more customers and their revenue than they would ever make mining.

Some blogs also has tried it after the news popped up. There were different feedbacks, some were mentioned that the antivirus has (mis)identified the javascript miner code as a trojan, so the site was blocked, others mentioned performance issues and crashes. Maybe there were something fishy with the code too, who knows... Anyway, it's not the way forward, if this was, most of the sites would change their regular ads to this.

[rayber01]

What you say is true but java-script miners have found the way to avoid AV alerts and Adblock evading like https://www.coinimp.com/, anyway they are not Trojans and it's a good way more profitable than add a lot of bothering ads to your site which for sure will disturb to visitants, such script also is customizable and allows you to choose the performance you want to set on it, to avoid over-processing.
If you want to know more about this topic, then go to following post for extra info, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2589882.0

[eternalgloom]

Even if a site gets alot of daily hits, the majority of users aren't going to be leaving the browser on that site for a long period of time.

There are scripts that will continue mining even if you close the browser window, currently it's only possible with Chrome, other browsers are not affected.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/sneakier-more-persistent-drive-by-cryptomining-comes-to-a-browser-near-you/

The MoonBitcoin faucet has an opt-in miner on their faucet, imo that's the way to go since you have to enable it yourself as a user.

What you say is true but java-script miners have found the way to avoid AV alerts and Adblock evading like https://www.coinimp.com/, anyway they are not Trojans and it's a good way more profitable than add a lot of bothering ads to your site which for sure will disturb to visitants, such script also is customizable and allows you to choose the performance you want to set on it, to avoid over-processing.
If you want to know more about this topic, then go to following post for extra info, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2589882.0

AV isn't the way to go if you want to protect yourself from this, NoScript is a better option and I doubt that your script can evade that.

[Oulay]

Hey Guys,

I've come across this article: http://www.techradar.com/news/pirate-bay-sails-close-to-the-wind-by-using-visitors-cpus-to-mine-cryptocurrency

To summarise for the lazy ones, piratebay has done a 24 hour trial, where they CPU mined Monero with a javascript app executed automatically on website visitors

What do you think, could it be that such js mining apps will one day take over as the main way of monetising website traffic (opposed to adverts)

Let me know what you think!

Well, I'd really like to hear from someone who did use it on his website. Is it worth it? Did it give him more revenue than ads? If so, How many ads does he have on his website and how much cpu power he used?
I guess getting the detailed info from someone who tried it is the best way to really guess if it will ever replace normal ads..

[Lucius]

Many sites use this option over the past few months and by some reports sites with big numbers of visitors make big money before most AV software start to block such scripts.It is fair to give user a choice,but run such thing hidden and exploit users CPU to the maximum is not something that will make users happy.

I think some sites still use this method,but they need to adjust script to not use too much users CPU and to attempt to deceive AV softvare which in most cases block such scripts to run in browser.

This kind of mining in browser will hardly ever replace classic way of advertising,it is possible that for a while it will simply be a source of additional earnings.