- Crypto mining offers potential for additional revenue sources
- Income potential in the millions for objective news sites
- eco proposes 10 rules of play for a potential legitimate use of crypto mining
Crypto mining could become established in future as an additional option for the financing of websites. To explain how, eco – Association of the Internet Industry has just published a whitepaper “Legitimate Use of Crypto Mining”. Crypto mining could offer an additional avenue of financing the provision of high-quality content for the operators of websites and other Internet offers, alongside or as an alternative to online advertising. In order to ensure this can be done securely and without eroding users’ trust, the whitepaper recommends 10 rules of play which could serve as the basis for the fair use of crypto mining.
“For German news sites alone, the untapped income potential of crypto mining runs into the millions,” eco Board Member and security expert Prof. Norbert Pohlmann estimates. The prerequisite for leveraging this potential, he continues, would be an ethical framework that Internet users and operators can jointly agree on. The whitepaper therefore presents practical recommendations for the legitimate use of crypto mining on websites and in mobile apps. The technology, according to Pohlmann, is not yet suited as a sole financing tool for websites. “However, especially companies that – in the face of falling income from advertising – are searching for new possibilities for monetization of good online content, should examine crypto mining as an additional option,” Pohlmann continues.
Transparent, secure, and data protection compliant
The eco whitepaper differentiates between crypto mining and crypto jacking. The latter denotes the attempt of cyber criminals to abuse infected smartphones, hijacked computers, networks, Wi-Fi hotspots and even data centers for mining. In this case, the income generated flows into the pockets of the cyber criminals. With legitimate crypto mining, however, website owners integrate a JavaScript script from a serious provider into their website. The users are explicitly informed and can give their consent for the script to be executed.
In the browser, this script starts the calculations required for the mining of crypto money, which run in the background, imperceptible to the user. There is no appreciable strain on the user’s hardware or bandwidth. The script then delivers the results of the calculation back to the operator. On the smartphone, the crypto mining functions can be directly integrated into the respective app and run in the background during the use of the app, with the consent of the user, without noticeably reducing the battery life or tying up resources in other ways.
The whitepaper “Legitimate Use of Crypto Mining” is available for download at go.eco.de/Crypto-Mining-Whitepaper.
