Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#1

Post by pizza » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:11 AM UTC

Javascript Bitcoin Miner
forum.bitcoin.org

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#2

Post by rgbrgb » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:32 AM UTC

Very interested to see if this could actually be an alternative to ad revenue.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#3

Post by Shamiq » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:35 AM UTC

rgbrgb wrote: post #2

Very interested to see if this could actually be an alternative to ad revenue.

As they point out -- you would need a visitor to remain on any given page for a relatively long period of time. Works well for long-form content, but breaks down in shorter chunks.

One thing I'm particularly interested in would be embedding this in a frame similar to stumbleupons web interface and allowing for revenue sharing with the user.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#4

Post by esrauch » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:40 AM UTC

Anyone care to calculate the actual expected revenue you could get from this?

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#5

Post by ck2 » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:41 AM UTC

You need a year's worth of 3ghz dual core cpu power to make 50 bitcoins.

This is some impressive code but not practical.

And I don't think visitors are going to like you maxing out their cpu.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#6

Post by HardyLeung » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:44 AM UTC

Javascript is way too slow compared to GPU, by at least a factor of 1000 or more. If you have 1M daily unique visitor and you manage to "steal" 10 CPU seconds from each of them, the amount of work would be equivalent to 1e6 * 10 / 1000 = 10000 seconds which is about 2.8 hours of one dedicated GPU-based mining machine.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#7

Post by cookiecaper » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

It is bad to use a bunch of the user's CPU without any notice. They will probably notice that your site makes their computer slow and never come back again. Also, once they find out you've been using their CPU power/electricity/battery life surreptitiously for private, unshared gain, you will probably have some angry customers.

Additionally, does this automatically hook in to slush's pool or something? Bitcoin mining is practically useless on CPU; even the fastest CPUs out get way, way less than 10mhash. The average length of time to find a block at 9999khash and current difficulty is 1200+ days, so even that estimate is over-optimistic, so this isn't worth anything if your users don't sit on your site for 5 years+, unless it's hooked into a pool or some other contraption to pay on shares instead of blocks.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#8

Post by seanalltogether » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:46 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #5

You need a year's worth of 3ghz dual core cpu power to make 50 bitcoins. This is some impressive code but not practical. And I don't think visitors are going to like you maxing out their cpu.

I know plenty of women who spends hours a day playing casual games, if you embedded a bitcoin miner into a free facebook game you might be able to generate some decent revenue while they play.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#9

Post by ccarpenterg » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:46 AM UTC

Idea: Screensavers with a bitcoin miner. Like SETI@home. Bitcoin@home!

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#10

Post by Klonoar » Fri, May 20, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

Neat! Distributed computing with JS is an awesome tech trick, some friends and I did something similar back during Node Knockout (MapRejuice: https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/maprejuice).

Curious to see what you guys think of the ethical side of it though - do you let this run on mobile, etc? This will almost definitely cause extra battery drain on mobile devices, you think it's fine to have this happen without user consent? ;)