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Whenever I see reference to bitcoin mining botnets, I wonder if this couldn't be implemented on a legitimate level. Call it "mineware", and the way it works is
by mistercow 14y ago
Whenever I see reference to bitcoin mining botnets, I wonder if this couldn't be implemented on a legitimate level. Call it "mineware", and the way it works is that you get a piece of software for free, but while it runs, it mines bitcoins for the developer.
This would be particularly well suited for professional graphics software. There you have customers with high end hardware, but that hardware is sitting idle for a large chunk of the time. The mining could be tuned to conservatively curb its CPU/GPU usage when other processes needed it. The end result is that you fully utilize a resource you have in order to get software for free.
The biggest problem, of course, is that this kind of breaks down if more than one developer does it.
- BarkMore 14y agoThis is similar to what CoinLab is doing. Gamers run the the CoinLab mining client in exchange for in-game currency.
- mistercow 14y agoThat's cool to see that the idea is being explored, although I think gaming is absolutely the wrong market for it. My understanding is that GPU processing is really where the money is for mining, and while a gamer's system likely has idle CPU cores to exploit, GPU is a rather precious resource for a game.
- BarkMore 14y agoThe idea is to mine when not playing the game. I know that some people seem to play games 24x7, but most people don't.
- vessenes 14y agoThis is one model we've explored. There are a few like this. What we're finding is that it comes down to distribution, really. Also, tuning GPUs to work 'conservatively' is a non-trivial engineering challenge.