Last week, NortonLifelock announced the addition of Ethereum mining to its Norton 360 antivirus software. The developers stated that miners, wallets and cryptocurrency utilities are often flagged as malware by antiviruses, so their proposal will allow users to mine cryptocurrency without having to abandon Norton’s security.

BleepingComputer tested a new feature. To do this, they purchased a Norton 360 license and entered the testing program.

pros

The main advantage of Norton Crypto is its easy connection to mining, which potentially opens up cryptocurrency mining for an impressive antivirus database of 50 million users. To connect to Norton Crypto, you need to be in an English-speaking country, have a GPU with a minimum of 3GB memory (NVIDIA 1050 or higher), a Windows computer, and join the testers program. Completing the last step will open the My Norton interface to “Turn PC Downtime into Money”. The whole process, including the reboot, takes about 10 minutes.

Once mining starts, Norton Crypto will start using GPUs to mine Ethereum. This will be indicated by the sound of the fan, since the antivirus uses the processing power of the video card by 100%.

In the interface, however, there is no way to connect to CPU mining. Initially, many users were interested in this opportunity.

Minuses

It is assumed that Norton Crypto will only mine cryptocurrency when the computer is idle. Nevertheless, even when starting the game (Days Gone), the program reported the continuation of mining. The game did not slow down, so the problem can be purely cosmetic.

Another problem: in 36 hours of testing, BleepingComputer did not earn a cent. Norton Crypto unites miners into a pool, but the function is still available to a limited number of users, whose computing power is most likely insufficient to compete with large mining pools.

In addition, Norton Crypto uses the GPU at 100% without the ability to adjust this setting, which can negatively affect the lifespan of video cards and lead to increased power consumption. Not all users, for whom mining is not a professional occupation, are ready for this.

Commissions

But the biggest problem with Norton Crypto is its fees. New pools often use zero fees in an attempt to attract miners, while the largest Spark Pool and EtherMine only charge users 1%. Norton mining fees are 15%.

“The cryptocurrency rewards earned by the pool, if any, are distributed based on the duration of your participation, the share of participation and the amount of ether received on its basis,” the service’s rules of use say. – From time to time, we will transfer your share of the cryptocurrency, if any, to a digital wallet that we will create for you. Each transfer is subject to a fee for providing Norton Crypto mining software. Our commission is currently 15% of the transfer amount ”.

Thus, Norton charges users 14% more than the largest mining pools charge. In other words, when earning $ 5 in Spark Pool and Ethermine, the miner will have to pay only $ 0.05, and in Norton Crypto – all $ 0.75. As the amount of earnings increases, so will the amount of the commission. Additionally, Ethereum is heading towards staking and getting ready to give up mining, which makes the decision to launch Norton Crypto even weirder now.