This past week, NortonLifeLock (NASDAQ: NLOK) launched Norton Crypto to Norton 360 customers in their early adopter program. Full rollout to all Norton 360 customers is expected sometime later this year. The company noted that certain PC hardware may be required to use the service.
For years, many coinminers have had to take risks in their quest for cryptocurrency, disabling their security in order to run coinmining and allowing unvetted code on their machines that could be skimming from their earnings or even planting ransomware.
It's certainly true that anti-virus software typically does not like mining programs. Norton Crypto appears to be a turnkey solution aimed at removing the barrier of entry for complete beginners. I'm not their target customer for this product but nevertheless, I have some questions.
Why Ethereum, why now?
This would have made a lot more sense if it were released earlier in Ethereum's lifecycle. People have already been mining Ethereum for six years and ETH 2.0 will be here soon(ish). The arrival of ETH 2.0 will render ETH mining obsolete since this will change Ethereum from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
While the company will start slow, with a focus on helping customers safely mine Ethereum, NortonLifeLock is considering adding reputable crypto currencies in the future.
Even if new coins and mining algorithms are incorporated in the future, I imagine there will be a lot of gatekeeping by Norton, picking and choosing only a small subset of coins to include.
Are users forced to use an in-house wallet?
It does not sound like they allow users to specify a wallet address to mine directly to. Their phrasing is also unclear if earned coins are stored elsewhere until manually moved to the wallet? Who owns the keys to what?
Once cryptocurrency has been earned, customers can track and transfer earnings into their Norton Crypto Wallet, which is stored in the cloud so it cannot be lost due to hard drive failure.
It's ok to have a default in-house wallet available for people that want to use it, but it seems unnecessarily restrictive to force everyone to use it. Do they really need to have control over the where the mining rewards are going?
How will the mining actually function?
Given the current Ethereum mining difficulty, it seems probable that mining would be done in pools to increase the chances of minting a block. Will Norton have their own in-house pool? Will users be able to choose between different pools? Will Norton be taking a pool fee? Will whatever they actually do offer be competitive with other options?
Additional thoughts?
Norton 360 already has 13 million customers, but it isn't cheap. The least expensive package is $150/year ($99.50 for the first year). Perhaps some existing customers will end up using Norton Crypto but I can't imagine that this product will net them a bunch of new customers.
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