Ask HN: Can Bitcoin mining fund OpenSSL? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can Bitcoin mining fund OpenSSL?

3 pointsmalanj3 comments

Is it feasible to add crypto-currency mining to open source projects like OpenSSL as a way to generate donations? If everyone running the libraries are prepared to have it run a few single digit %'s slower and allocate those cycles to mining it could perhaps solve the funding problem. I would personally be happy to have my OpenSSL run 5% slower if I know the project is getting funded because of it. Are there ways to get past the security concerns? Could this be practically implemented?

Competing with ASICs is probably not practical for SHA hashes (i.e. Bitcoin) but it seems feasible to target scrypt based currencies like Litecoin or Dogecoin where CPUs are relatively stronger.

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I think it would have to be a cryptocurrency that was amenable to CPU mining. That rules out most of the existing ones, although it's possible to create a new one specifically for this.

The cryptocurrency would not be tied to the project in any way. Users could obviously disable the mining code, and many would. How would this be different from just suggesting to people that they could mine cryptocurrencies however they like and donate the proceeds to the project?

edit: I'd also be concerned about the power usage...

The conclusion i have come to after reading about Heartbleed is, that OpenSSL's code is a giant monolithic mess and does everything on its own from the ground up in a highly optimized way for each and every platform, thus breaking the simple rule "do not trust the client, ever" could stay undetected.

Adding a Bitcoin miner to the mix would worsen the problems.

I think OpenSSL needs professional structure - organization and code-wise to gain funds and harden the system. This was discussed in other threads on HN already, i am of the opinion that they could pull this of, if they wanted to invest time into it.

For consumers i could imagine a system library or framework, which applications could depend upon. This way the mining would be encapsulated. The user could get some control options and some information dashboards. The apps would then talk to the miner and ask for a share.

An interesting idea, I doubt an established project with all the personalities involved would adopt it easily - but certainly an idea for a new project that doesn't want to be ad or donation independent.

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