Cryptocurrency has always been in dire straits on multiple accounts, such as: for being unauthorized and uncontrolled mode of payment as no government agency or central bank controls it, for causing a huge damage to our climate as it consumes too much of energy which is consumed by fossil-fuels, especially coal. Likewise, it also faces criticism for volatility of highly likeliness as value fluctuates frequently and mostly by news from financial markets and so forth. But, prestigious anti-virus software brand Norton 360, has declared to give way to Ethereum mining in its product range.
As declared by the company, Norton 360 customers will enjoy additional feature of Ethereum mining in the “coming weeks”. As we know, “mining” in crypto parlance, refers to composite calculations one does using hardware networked to computer and earns a bounty.
What exactly is the business notion that Norton follows here, is still cloudy, one is likely to think that Norton would get a commission or share in earnings.
Augustly, the company punctuates the idea as a safe passage to step into the mining spectrum and hails it, “an important part of our customers”.
Norton LifeLock, which was once known by the name Symantec, issued a press release stating, “For years, many coin miners have had to take risks in their quest for cryptocurrency, disabling their security in order to run coin mining.”
Even though, Ethereum is hailed for utilizing much lower energy than the bitcoin does, while in recent blogpost, Mr. Carl Beekhuzian, who is foundation researcher at Ethereum, revealed about program that is still being developed but which would help saving upto 99.50% of energy.
Mr. Carl curtly reported, “”Digiconomist estimates that Ethereum miners currently consume 44.49 TWh per year which works out to 5.13 gigawatt continuingly. This means that PoS is ~2000x more energy efficient based on the conservative estimates, which reflects a reduction of at least 99.95% in total energy use,”
Cutting back to Norton, interestingly, scores of anti-virus software programs, including Norton, often regard mining programs, that may widely popular, as dangerous compelling users to deactivate antivirus programs to resume mining game.
Besides, Norton also signals “about allowing unvetted code on their machines” and also flag the risk when earnings are stored onto the hard drive.
But then, established miners lay hands upon prime mining apps from paramount companies and some apps are designed with such innovation that one is saved from entering lines of codes as lengthy scripts.
Pooling millions
When it comes to Ethereum mining, such turns out to be a Herculean Task when one acts like a lone wolf, and a lot of luck and exclusive and extensive hardware is needed, to earn coins.
But Norton provides screenshots showing that system will harp upon a “pool” comprising a legion of mining legends who would assist each other with the degree of computing power they would have and hence reward would e shared among them, proportionate to the amount of work each machine has rendered.
Further, a 1% of all earnings would be charged by such pools once they would be hailed as set standard.
Clearly, if the model gets implemented rightly and is received warmly all across, Norton would enable its customers to unlock a new earning stream.
Notwithstanding, the declaration has filled technocrats with a certain degree of scepticism. However, Company revealed to global media about providing command and console for mining other cryptocurrencies as well, other than Ethereum. But, techies should also be ready to shell out money for electricity bills, as such would consume considerable amount of energy.
Further, Norton has wider preference in United States where income earned through cryptocurrency is taxable and reportable and which friendly miners may not know about. Not surprisingly, Norton most of the times, is pre-installed on scores of laptop brands providing free service for a while, then asks for a paid subscription.
At media site, The Verge, it mentions, “It’s easy to imagine a company, not necessarily Norton, offering cheaper or even free computers, if you just turn your unused computing cycles into a recurring source of profit for the bloatware makers subsidizing your purchase.”
“Norton may be opening a door here that’s hard to close.”
Norton product executive Gagan Singh also issued a statement, “We are proud to be the first consumer cyber-safety company to offer coin miners the ability to safely and easily turn the idle time on their PCs into an opportunity to earn digital currency.
“Our customers can mine for cryptocurrency with just a few clicks, avoiding many barriers to entry in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
Company also unravelled that early adopters of the program would have access to the product from today – but more features would be suffixed to it in coming weeks.
