CryptoCurrency mining on mobile as an alternative monetization approach

• Main Authors: HUYNH, Nguyen Phan Sinh, CHOO, Kenny, BALAN, Rajesh Krishna, LEE, Youngki
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Cryptocurrency mining; Mobile monetization; Distributed mobile computing; Mining Engineering; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4324; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5327/viewcontent/p51_huynh_1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Can cryptocurrency mining (crypto-mining) be a practical ad-free monetization approach for mobile app developers? We conducted a lab experiment and a user study with 228 real Android users to investigate different aspects of mobile crypto-mining. In particular, we show that mobile devices have computational resources to spare and that these can be utilized for crypto-mining with minimal impact on the mobile user experience. We also examined the profitability of mobile crypto-mining and its stability as compared to mobile advertising. In many cases, the profit of mining can exceed mobile advertising's. Most importantly, our study shows that the majority (72%) of the participants are willing to allow crypto-mining as means to replace ads to trade-off for benefits such as a better user experience.