Intent to add a coin miner for a trial run · Issue #189 · ParticleCore/Iridium ·...

This ties a bit with #149 since I really dislike the idea to profit from telemetry, but I also need to find a way to make this hobby profitable.

I intend to add a coin miner together with the extension for a trial run to see if it is even worth it. Although I might change my mind about this later, initially this will be enabled by default because I assume that the current user base is too small to spare the "extra hand" in order to achieve a reliable projection of this trial. Nevertheless it would have an option to disable and control the number of threads it can use.

At the moment I have been studying the available options and so far it seems that coin hive is the best option overall.

The plan is to:

• have only one instance of it running at any session (session = one or more browser windows that can communicate between tabs)
• only the lowest "performance" by default (1 thread running)
• pause/stop when a video starts playing

I also understand how this feels like a stupid idea, but I do not have any means to make any profit that is worth the time I am dedicating to this extension, and I need to understand if this will be worth while before investing it for the stable release, which I am planning to reach before October starts, although I might have to push that date a bit further, unfortunately.

I only ask that any upset users understand my position, I am trying to make this profitable without making this a pay-to-use extension, and I am not finding a lot of options. I have looked through ads (I hate it and most likely wouldn't work), selling telemetry (I don't like the idea) and now mining currency, which appears to be a good option.

This goes without saying; if donations do improve with the aging of the extension, this or any other method for profiting would be halted seeing that they would no longer be needed, however the past almost 3 years showed that this wasn't something that would be achieved any time soon.

I would really appreciate constructive feedback as well as alternatives to coin hive, if you know of better options, or another option to make this extension profitable.

EDIT 1: adding an index of my replies here as a follow up of this post

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EDIT 2: adding updating feature design for easier insight

• This feature will be opt-in
• The users will be informed of its implementation and asked if they want to help out or not (still undecided whether to do this via a modal window or a dedicated window)
• The summary of the feature will link to a more detailed explanation, including details about the inner works of the miner itself
• The feature will only run when videos are not playing, but for the sake of curiosity there will be an option where users can enable to let it run while videos are playing
  • Alternative: keep it running on lowest possible setting when videos are playing (sessions on YouTube are heavy on video watching, meaning that the miner would be for the most part stopped)
• The feature will allow control of how much mining the user allows: number of threads and throttle slider (less threads and higher throttle = less CPU usage and less mining)
• Default feature values will be set for half the number of CPU threads at 0.75 throttle or 1 thread at 0.5 throttle (still learning this because I haven't fully grasped how it works)
• This feature will never run on laptops that are not charging and on mobile devices (tablets, for example)
• Only one mining instance can run at any time, meaning that if there are multiple tabs open, only one tab can be mining and the rest will be paused/stopped (ideally this should be controlled via active page is the one the miner can start/resume, all inactive pages pause/stop)