A look at Electroneum and Mobile Mining

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago

Mining is expensive and in many cases not worth it for the average person, as without specialized equipment or being a part of a blockpool to distribute the workload it doesn't even cover the cost of the electricity to mine. However, Electroneum offers to do something different. It offers users to mine using their mobile phones without the need of an expensive multi graphics card setup or technical know-how. This article will look into

A. Does it make good on that promise?

B. How does it do it?

C. Is it worth doing?

A. The first step is to see if it simply even works. Can you, as their website proclaims, download their app and begin mining directly to your mobile wallet that is built into the app? Yes it does, simple as that. You first download the app from Google Play Store or iOS App Store. Then you create an account at electroneum.com. This website also doubles as your wallet when you log in at my.electroneum.com. Then you launch the app, enter your credentials, and you can press a big blue button on the screen and it begins mining. When I first launched this app, it appeared the mining function had not yet been added to the app, but now it is live and functional. It sets a hash rate based on your mobile phone strength and slowly generates you currency. For those of you curious what phone model I was using, this is on a Samsung Galaxy S6

Screenshot_20180315-170426.png

The app has a minimum payout amount currently of 10 electroneum. This can be changed in the future, and it was even changed while I was mining, because when I started mining the minimum payout was 5 electroneum and I had begun to think it was a fraud because they were slow to update it. The reason why is because of the network load the app was causing with so many transactions and delaying payment. But at the end of it all, I was able to indeed get my 10+ electroneum and it is in my wallet.

Screenshot_20180315-170151.png

B. Curiously, it doesn't actually mine! The app states that the mobile miner simply checks how much processing power is available to your phone, and it then assigns a hash rate as if your phone was actually mining. For that reason, it seems to be that rather than making your phone work for electroneum, this app simply distributes electroneum based on a secret algorithm. The electricity cost of the app is very low, and because it uses no real processing power you are free to use other apps while it is running in the background. However if you do this or leave your phone unused for several hours while it runs in the background, the app will lower your hash rate. On startup of the mining app, my phone would often get a hash rate between 28-32 h/s, but after leaving it unattended and checking later, I would usually find my hashrate at 12-13 h/s. Take that as you will.

C. I started mining on the app on March 6th, 2018. My transaction from the mobile miner was received on March 12th, 2018 at 5 pm and that was after a bit of delay, at least 12 hours. The app was kept running pretty much at all times during that mining period, with very few breaks. So it took my phone, the Samsung Galaxy S6, roughly 6 days to "mine" electroneum. The 10 electroneum, due to this current bear market and some swings during the last few days, is roughly 36 cents. Now the first question would be is it worth it have this app running in the background for 24 hours at a time for roughly 6 days, for what amounts to 36 cents? No. On first glance at least.

However Electroneum doesn't want to be some gimmick you run in the background for pennies, it wants to be a payment platform that is widely used. This is where the question turns into whether or not its worth mining now so that you have a some cash in the future. And I say yes, that it is worth it. Not simply because I believe in their grandiose vision, on the contrary, I have a lot of hang ups with it. But what I do believe is that the app, as it currently stands, isn't vampiric enough to be worried about it. The minor electricity cost of running it in the background is currently not significant enough to consider at as serious battery issue on many newer mobile phones, especially flag ships. If you are using your phone day to day and are charging it on a nightly basis as I do, then there is currently an insignificant difference between running and not running the app. For that reason, I think it's worth it to take a bet on it growing in the short term for little cost to your mobile device.

For future articles on crypto currencies and other topics, considering following me here and on gab.ai/isoveit

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