Ethereum now can be mined through Norton 360

Norton Crypto: a new feature that enables users to mine cryptocurrency easier

NortonLifelock enables cryptomining with its new Norton Crypto feature

Norton 360 is an all-in-one security suite created for the general public. It's one of the most popular anti-malware tools used worldwide. Symantec, the security firm behind it, has introduced a brand new feature – cryptocurrency mining.

Although at first users will be able to mine only Ethereum, the company has stated that more variations to the cryptocurrencies will be added shortly. The newly added feature to NortonLifelock will be called Norton Crypto and will be available to Norton's early adopter program users starting June 3, 2021.

CEO of NortonLifeLock, Vincent Pilette, has commented on the new release by stating:

As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust.

How Norton Crypto works?

Cryptocurrency is a booming business and has become somewhat of a trend with various celebrities endorsing them, as Elon Musk did with Dogecoin.^[1] With Symantec offering their new service, a whole new era dawns. Now, if and when people decide to get into cryptomining, they won't have to search for information on various shady forums and risk their security by mining with their antivirus protection turned off.

Their own security tool (if using Norton 360) will be able to gather cryptocurrency for them. Although it wasn't disclosed whether a user with Norton Crypto enabled would mine independently or as a part of a larger group of people, or a so-called pool.

Mining a significant amount of Ethereum requires a lot of people. Thus researchers^[2] presume that Norton would act as an operator by gathering large groups of its software users. Of course, the company would take its operator's fee for such a service.

While the Norton Crypto is running, it uses the device's GPU (graphic card) to mine for cryptocurrency, in this case, Ethereum. It's safely held in the Norton Wallet, which is hosted in the cloud for extra security, and users could withdraw the accumulated amount at any given time by pressing a button.^[3]

Norton may have chosen Ethereum (also known as Ether and ETH) because since it was released in 2015, it has become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization,^[4] right after Bitcoin. At the time of writing, the price for 1 ETH was swindling and around $2,800.

Problems with cryptomining

Although the added ability to mine cryptocurrency with software that's usually pre-installed on new computers might seem helpful, there might be a lot of drawbacks to it too. The feature should be operational only when the PC is idle (emphasis on should be).

One of the biggest problems with mining cryptocurrency is the amount of electricity consumed while doing that. Cryptomining is a very power-hungry business. A recently conducted study^[5] revealed that the annual amount of electricity used to mine Bitcoins exceeds the annual amount used by the whole country of Argentina.

Thus in this day and age, with global warming on our hands, cryptomining isn't considered very eco-friendly. In fact, the exact opposite. Therefore with its seemingly useful Norton Crypto feature for its users and the company, Symantec isn't doing any favors for Mother Earth.