Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Norton Crypto. It’s EVEN WORSE than you think….”.
Everyone and their dog has tried to get into crypto or blockchain technology somehow., And I think it’s now safe to say we have finally jumped the shark. Norton. The infamous antivirus company is no longer content to waste. Just a little bit of your computer’s resources. Several months ago, they said you know what screw it. And injected their own cryptocurrency mining software into Norton 360.. We gasped.
We shouted., We cried. And then because it’s our job to try these things so that you don’t have to. We resigned ourselves to installing it., Leaving only one question: is it as good as my segue to today’s sponsor, Thanks to KiwiCo for sponsoring this video.
KiwiCo ships out crates that contained hands-on projects for kids to help develop their creative confidence and problem solving skills. Learn more At the end of this video or at the link down, below. ( upbeat music, ) Right out of the gate, we’re starting out strong here, because, unlike basically every other mining software, you’ve got to pay to play.
Norton Crypto. Yes, that’s what they’re actually calling it is. Only available with a Norton 360 subscription., So I begrudgingly handed over my credit card to do something that we basically tell everyone not to do.
Install Norton.. With that bitter pill swallowed, we looked for the opt-in, prompt, the one asking if you want to make some money, while your PC is idling and we thought Hey seems like a great idea., Everybody loves free money and clicked it.. But how does it work Once? It’S enabled, after about a minute of your GPU idling, the Norton Crypto miner will turn on adding your graphics cards power to an Ethereum mining pool where it and every other Norton miner goes to work digging for ether..
When a payout happens, it gets split equally. Amongst those in the pool, depending on how much hash rate they’ve contributed. Now this isn’t anything new.. The first mining pool Slush Pool came out in 2010 and consolidated machines to mine Bitcoin in order to give the little guy an edge over larger operations by banding together.. Over the years, more and more mining pool operations have sprung up and as long as you have the computational power, you’re, basically free to join., But Norton had some innovative new ideas.. While most pools and exchanges take a small one or 2 % cut of your mining profits to share with the pool operator and many mining clients also have small associated fees..
Norton figured Hey we’re already charging you for Norton 360.. So, let’s disrupt the status quo by charging, wait 15 (, beep, ) percent. Excuse me., Even ignoring the paid nature of their software compared to basically any other solution, 15 % is outrageous. And the worst part is we had to go digging for this information..
At no point during the setup process, where we informed of this fee. And we even tried clicking the, how does this work button but found only a brief FAQ with basic explanations for things like what is a blockchain And how does mining work, The fee was actually Hidden away in a support page for Norton Crypto behind a dropdown. There’s, just no respect for the customer, here., Just a hidden middle finger, waiting to gouge your wallet., I feel like you – should spend your money on lttstore.com instead.. Look at these sexy wan sweatpants.! It’S time to put my feelings aside: though., Not every product is targeted at enthusiasts like me and you., So let’s play a little game and say we’re already paying for Norton 360 or it came free with the purchase of our PC, and we would rather trust a Big name: we recognize like Norton versus spending a bunch of time doing research., I mean it’s a couple of clicks and who cares about 15 % if it’s all profit anyway right? Why not let your GPU mine, while you’re at work or sleeping Okay., So the app itself is actually kind of okay.. It shows you, the current US dollar to Ethereum conversion, the card that you’ll be mining on its average hash rate and both your daily and monthly expected return.. This all seems great for the most part, but it ignores some basics like telling you how much wattage your GPU is pulling or, more importantly, factoring those power costs into it’s calculations.. It also doesn’t bring up a client window showing you what exactly is going on. When you join a pool on your own or usually through a third party, there’s typically a client app involved. That shows you important stats like, among other things, hash rate power, consumption, job acceptance or network info like latency, or dropped packets and it’ll kind of scroll. By as your machine does it’s thing., Maybe that’s too scary for the target, audience or Norton felt it was unnecessary, but whatever the case it’s just not here.. Another missing feature is any sort of optimizer.. Often, when you’re first setting up a new minor, you can run through an optimization feature that will try a number of power, core clock and memory clock settings to get the best results for your specific hardware.. It then saves a config file somewhere that the miner can read whenever it’s booted up. And if Norton is doing this in the background somewhere, it isn’t very good..
You know what else probably won’t be very good Water cooling gear from wish.com. Get subscribed. So you don’t miss that video.
Now I know that a lot of you consider NiceHash to be controversial., So we don’t work with them in a sponsored capacity anymore and we’re not promoting their use here., But we needed a control that we know is easy to use.. So we fired it up on our test bench which will have affiliate links for down below first using NiceHash’s QuickMiner, then for another hour with Norton Crypto. And here’s the thing it’s normal for your return to fluctuate somehow throughout the day.
But the results were staggering. With Norton Crypto. Our 20 80 super on an open air test bench hit 65 degrees, pulled about 160 watts and saw a maximum hash rate of 37.2 mega hashes per second., With the QuickMiner after running OC tune.
We pulled about a hundred to 105 Watts, hovered around 50 degrees Celsius and had a higher hash rate averaging closer to 40 or even 45 mega hashes per second.. Now, obviously, the winner here doesn’t surprise us much.. Do we trust the experts or the newcomers, But I did not expect a performance gap.
The size of the Grand Canyon. 65 degrees might seem fine overall, but we anticipate a lot of users to be on laptops, with hot components in a more enclosed environment.. That 65 could easily turn into 80 degrees or higher in the right or wrong environment., And don’t forget that power is expensive in some parts of the world., So that 30 or $ 40 of monthly income could come with a hefty power. Bill. And you’ll also be paying Gas Fees a small or sometimes not small fee. When you want to exchange your Ethereum.
And the best part is that if the sucky performance isn’t enough to keep you away, there are even more problems with one of the biggest being. How hard it is to remove Norton Crypto from the rest of Norton 360. Now actually enabling the software is optional, but installing it isn’t and to get rid of it. You need to temporarily turn off Norton’s tamper protection feature then delete the encrypt executable..
Now some other users have also mentioned things, just not working from time to time or suddenly empty wallets, both of which are frustrating, but at least you can usually find an answer from Norton in the comments.. So far it looks like they only have plans to mine in Ethereum, although they will look at potentially adding other currencies in the future.. In case you didn’t know, Ethereum is supposed to go from proof-of-work, which is what’s currently happening when you joined the mining pool to proof-of-stake, which instead uses staked to Ethereum to validate blockchains and add new blocks., It’s meant to be much more energy efficient, but to be A staker you need 32 ether about a hundred thousand us dollars. Worth.
Fear not, though, staking pools are already a thing., So the little guy isn’t completely shut out and the full transition has actually been pushed back a number of times, but once it happens, there’s no telling what Norton Crypto will do next. Whatever it is. I expect that it’ll reflect their obvious attitude over there, which is .