Can Cryptocurrency Mining Save the Media Business?

Media company Salon is offering an alternative to invasive online ads: run a cryptocurrency miner.

On Sunday, Salon.com began offering readers the choice to help fund its operations. The miner—which requires people to opt in—runs over your internet browser and siphons away a PC'south excess calculating power to generate a virtual currency called Monero.

The mining isn't meant to exist a cash cow for Salon. It'southward a test designed to address a select group of readers: those who've called to run an ad blocker in their browser.

Upon visiting Salon.com, these visitors are given two options: permit the ads to run or permit the company harvest "unused computing power." Otherwise, all admission to the gratuitous site volition be blocked.

The goal backside the change is to fight the rise of ad blockers, which Salon CEO Jordan Hoffner said have been eating into the visitor's revenues. His hope is to clasp some return from readers once locked abroad behind the ad stopping technology.

"I tin can't just sit here and await for someone else to come up with a solution," Hoffner told PCMag. "Nosotros've had to take actions ourselves."

Salon is a rare case of a mainstream website—without a shady reputation—deciding to adopt browser-based cryptocurrency mining. Last September, The Pirate Bay, a destination known for bootlegging content, as well incorporated the mining every bit a way to generate revenue from visitors.

Some other group that's been a fan of the mining: hackers. For months now, cybercriminals take been tampering with websites, and sliding in lawmaking without your permission. Calculating power is siphoned away to generate Monero, which is now worth effectually $240 a coin—up from a mere $12 a year ago.

Salon, however, is being upfront nearly the mining. The site explicitly gives you a pick to opt in, and once you shut the browser window or visit some other site, the mining stops. "I wouldn't put something out there that would hurt other people's computers," Hoffner said.

Nonetheless, the mining does come with a cost. Salon readers who participate volition find it hogging their computer'southward PC resources, which can bear on operation and bleed battery life. Simply in exchange, Salon readers get free content and no ads.

Salon'south CEO said the mining was worth exploring, even every bit it isn't clear how much it can generate for the company. But not anybody is bullish on the venture.

Function of the trouble is the way the mining volition occur. Readers who opt in may only visit the site for a few minutes in a single mean solar day, meaning Salon's access to their computing power will be brusk. Troy Mursch, an independent security researcher, estimated that Salon'south news site might only generate $425 worth of Monero a month — assuming every visitor participates in the mining.

"If it was just some people opting in, then even less," Mursch said. "Non that I'm rooting against them, merely I feel it'll exist a failed monetization experiment."

To mine the cryptocurrency, Salon is as well relying on a 3rd-party service called Coinhive, which has gained an infamous reputation in the IT security community. Since September, Coinhive has been offering a cryptocurrency miner that anyone can register and use. Customers include porn websites, net forums, and small community sites, only hackers have been employing the service, also.

In response, Coinhive has been cracking downward on bad actors, it said in an electronic mail. Overall, though, Monero mining has proven to be quite lucrative: Coinhive has mined the equivalent of a few meg in US dollars, 30 pct of which it volition have a cutting.

Time volition tell how much Salon can generate from the new project. But its CEO said his company is striving to pioneer new business organisation models and technologies. Leveraging readers' excess computing power for important causes certainly shows potential, Hoffner added. "Nosotros are excited nearly this. I think we can create a new dynamic potentially," he said.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/19588/can-cryptocurrency-mining-save-the-media-business

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