Are webminers the microtransaction dream realized?

Why the ability to mine cryptocurrency in your browser might solve the problem of content monetization

Several days ago, I heard that the Pirate Bay torrent site was acting strangely. I hopped over there and I noticed that my laptop began to run slowly and started heating up. Upon investigation, it became clear that the Pirate Bay had sneakily inserted a snippet of code into their website borrowing user resources for cryptocurrency mining.

wha-what!

I sidled over to CoinHive to see what the fuss was about. Lo and behold, they have created a tool which lets websites borrow CPU cycles from visitors to mine Monero. Why Monero? Because its cryptonight algorithm means it can be mined profitably on consumer grade CPUs, and GPUs do not have a huge advantage; no Monero ASICs exist.

Pirate Bay subsequently admitted that it was just a test, and they had accidentally set the slider to the maximum setting, which explains why the TPB made my laptop sound like a jet taking off.

It was just a prank, bro

Interestingly, the Pirate Bay community was overwhelmingly supportive of the idea — with the caveat that TPB actually disclose that they’re doing it, and only borrow a portion of the user’s resources.

At this point, I started getting very excited. I spend a lot of time wondering about how websites might be able to monetize their content without sacrificing user privacy or selling their data. I have very fond memories of tipping people with my stack of Doge in 2014. That was my first major entry into cryptocurrency, and at the time I was entranced with the possibilities. Microtransactions everywhere. A tipjar on every website. Micropayments for news articles or youtube videos. No more ads, just a pure, consenting relationship between users and content creators.

Of course, that dream did not materialize. As it turned out, cryptocurrencies are generally quite inefficient, and not well suited to microtransactions at all. And that’s fine. As Ari Paul says, you may not be able to optimize a cryptocurrency both for the unseizable store of value “digital gold” use case and the low fee means-of-exchange proposition. Centralized, conventional digital payment systems are a lot better at rapid, easy to integrate, fee-less transactions. That’s why Paypal and Venmo dominate the space today.

Webminers change the game somewhat. They hint at a future where websites can monetize without ads, and without an active transaction from users. There’s no transaction that must be registered on the blockchain. Value is instead transferred from users’ computers and electricity to websites, via the mining of cryptocurrency. It’s virtually frictionless, and occurs passively.

Coinhive also offers some other implementations of the technology, including PoW shortlinks that redirect after a set number of hashes and a PoW CAPTCHA.

Coinhive’s non-CAPTCHA CAPTCHA

Their CAPTCHA isn’t really a CAPTCHA, as humans have no advantage over machines in solving it, but it does provide websites with an anti-spam mechanism that pays them for the privilege. You can imagine how these sort of implementations might provide websites with an alternative to Cloudflare for DDoS protection. In a petty way, this sort of thing excites me because I truly resent training Google’s algorithm by clicking cars or street signs every time I go online. And because this is is more evidence of PoW’s uniqueness and value, in a world that seems to be tending towards PoS with disturbing rapidity.

“Adam Back’s original vision”

Back to the webmining. The revelation elicited mixed reactions from the Monero community. Some miners lamented the increased mining difficulty and reduced profitability. Others pointed out that websites monetizing through Monero mining would represent a continuous negative pressure on the price. Some worried that it would make Monero synonymous with shady websites and malware.

As a Monero user and privacy advocate, I am thrilled. Done responsibly, webminers could:

permit users to support their favorite websites even with adblock turned on

let websites monetize without collecting any user data or metadata

allow websites to monetize without letting hordes of trackers follow their users around the internet

spare users the hassle of banner ads, malware, and pop-ups

allow websites blacklisted by payment processors to monetize without facing censorship or asking contributions of their users

restore the mutual social contract between users and websites without introducing third party incentives

This is sort of what Basic Attention Token is going for, except it does it with a lot less hassle and without an intermediary organization — just open browser windows and CPU cycles.

Of course, done badly, webmining is another form of malware. While it should be fairly obvious to users if websites are exploiting their open browser windows for processing power and electricity, the setting can be altered to make it imperceptible. This would be a surreptitious way to essentially steal resources from users. I anticipate some websites will attempt this, and adblockers will start blocking these sorts of scripts by default.

Additionally, webminers aren’t very profitable. By CoinHive’s own admission, it’s probably only worth running one if you run a fairly popular website where users spend prolonged periods — an online gaming or streaming site, for instance. And they take a 30% cut as a reward for having created it. Not to mention, Monero only generates about half a million USD in miner revenue per day.

See more charts like this at Coinmetrics.io

That represents the maximum daily attainable value from this strategy. (It could plausibly use another cryptocurrency with a GPU-resistant algorithm.) Bitcoin generates about $8m in miner revenue per day, but mining on Bitcoin would be totally unprofitable due to its difficulty and the disadvantage non-ASIC miners face.

However, this is an intensely promising development, for several reasons.

It’s very simple to integrate. Reddit user /u/tvanroo whipped up a webminer in minutes which donates all monero raised to a children’s charity. It lets users contribute (very small sums) to charity just by keeping a browser window open. /u/musistic-brian built a wordpress plugin. A Belgian college professor is hoping visitors to his website mine enough Moneroj to buy him a Tesla. It invisibly integrates cryptocurrency into everyday life. I’ve always imagined that mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency will occur when individuals use it without realizing. Let’s face it: UIs in this space are generally terrible and it’s obscenely difficult for the average joe to get started on something like Monero. This gently introduces mining and PoW to normal folks in a passive and simple manner. That’s how mainstream adoption happens. It eliminates personal data collection and awful advertisements in favor of behind-the-scenes hashing. It restores the relationship between content providers and site visitors that has been totally derailed by armies of trackers and the commodification of personal data.

While some users might take umbrage at websites borrowing their electricity and CPU cycles, if done right, this innovation could end the ads/adblock arms race and alter the way individuals interact with websites. I’m all for it.