Ethereum CPU Mining has taken off because Ethereum (and its coin Ether) has become popular. It’s a relative newcomer to the crypto market, but unlike its predecessor Bitcoin, Ethereum’s blockchain platform has been more geared towards maintaining user privacy. These days that’s important because ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where Facebook data was used to influence elections in India and the United States, there has been greater concern among ordinary users of online platforms about what’s happening with their personal information.
A lot of our personal data is now outside of our control, sitting on multiple hard drives in locations all over the world, and this isn’t just information that we’ve chosen to share with Netflix or Google. It’s also a product of the kind of surveillance that our phone apps are reporting back all the time. It comes from the ads that we click on and even the places that we physically visit.
Ethereum CPU mining has arisen to create more Ethereum. It’s intended to replace servers with volunteer nodes, using less powerful machines that don’t centralize stored data. Ethereum CPU mining produces Ether and shares it between mining pool members, so that everyone gets an amount in their wallet that’s consistent with the work they’ve done.
If you want to mine bitcoin nowadays than you need to buy powerful and very expensive ASIC machines, but you can get into Ethereum mining using just your own PC. Lots of individual nodes help to mine Ethereum, which means users of off-the-shelf computers can help to produce cryptocurrency through Ethereum CPU mining. All of these computers working together are able to verify transactions that cannot be later falsified, so in that respect its contributing to data security for everyone involved.
