Coinhive, a mining program that mines Monero via browsers, reported that it will stop all its operations because further work will not bring any profit. The company intends to pull the plug on the entire operation on March 8, according to their blog post.
The team cites three reasons which prompted them to make this decision. The first one involved the hashrate of Monero dropping by 50 percent after the coin experienced the recent hard fork. The second one is because the crypto market’s bearish run of last year and XMR losing nearly 85 percent of its trading price.
The last reason is the next Monero hard fork which is scheduled to happen on March 9 at block number 1788000. In addition to Coinhive particularly, the incoming XMR hard fork will take its toll on all ASIC users in terms of mining.
Coinhive enables users to embed a JavaScript code into their website, so that its guests can mine for the user XMR via their browsers, making use of their computing power in return for offering an ad-free experience.
Hackers have used this mining code to their own advantage in the form of cryptojacking. However, its functions differ depending on the website they use.
The service will officially stop working on March 8, but Coinhive will allow users to access their dashboards until the end of April.
The question many users have in mind is whether the code for XMR mining will remain on the websites on which they have been installed.
This mirrors a similar situation which occurred in January 2019, when Microsoft removed almost ten Windows 10 apps from its app store after finding XMR mining code embedded in them.
Featured Image: Coindoo
