uMiner - Ethereum cryptocurrency miner inside Unity

Community Showcases
1

Introduction
uMiner is a Unity plugin that allows a new kind of revenue model for the developers!

Game developers can utilize players’ unused GPU resources for mining cryptocurrencies (ethereum or ubiq only for now) in Unity during game play.

Include uMiner in your game and all the players will generate revenue for you just by playing.

Must have addition to every free-to-play game and great alternative to ads!

Ethereum algorithm (Dagger-Hashimoto) is a memory hard problem, this means that mining only uses 5% to 10% CPU and most of the GPU processing power is still usable. The GPU RAM bandwidth is the bottleneck. This means that the uMiner can be used inside almost every game!

uMiner is a work in progress and I’ll release it some day.

Features

  • uMiner is a complete C# rewrite of the ethminer ( GitHub - ethereum-mining/ethminer: Ethereum miner with OpenCL, CUDA and stratum support )

  • No unsafe or C++ code

  • Performance is almost the same as the current C++ version of the ethminer

  • uMiner is 20MH/s vs 22MH/s native on my GeForce 1080 GPU

  • C# console version runs identical 22MH/s so it is probably Unity overhead

  • Multi GPU support could be added if needed (do gamers really use multiple gpus?)

  • Low CPU overhead

  • Dev fee is first accepted share per player session for me

  • Rest of the shares are yours

  • Gaming performance takes a hit, but it can be implemented fully into a game and still have 60 fps

  • Included demo runs 55fps on my computer with unlimited mining

  • Mining speed can be limited to increase resources for gaming (more fps)

  • Only 3rd party library used is Cloo ( https://cloo.sourceforge.io/ )

  • OpenCL based GPU calculations

  • Full source code is included

  • Free! (Except the dev fee share)

  • Should work in all the platforms that support OpenCL and have enough GPU RAM

  • Uses WebClient and Unity Json to communicate with a mining farm

Prerequisites

  • GPU with at least 3GB of RAM

Mining? Cryptocurrency? Ethereum?

Please read at least the following articles before asking here:

http://ethereum-mining.wikia.com/wiki/Ethereum_Mining_Wikia

Usage
I’ll update this after the asset is released.

Demo
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhwxGBCpbRndhe4YiKjlZrQHtm9OOw

It is just a default asset store survival shooter demo with uMiner plugin.

It starts by generating a light.dat file (it takes 10 seconds or so, then it is cached on the harddrive for faster access next time). Then it starts mining to a Ubiq pool under my wallet, for testing purposes.

UI displays fps, current MH/s and accepted / rejected shares.
Press spacebar during the gameplay to pause or restart mining progress.

Exiting game probably crashes.

License
This plugin cannot be used to mine cryptocurrencies without players consent.
This is a free asset so the dev fee for me is mandatory.

Please report rejected shares or any comments or wishes here.

BR,
Tommi

5 Likes
2

Nice project !

3

when the asset will be released ? Thank you

4

still in proccess?

5

Well, I completed it last year, but I’m hesistant to release it because how banks are aligning against cryptocurrency business.

6

The incentive structure with this is great. Developers would make more money the more their game is played. Plus, games wouldn’t need in-game purchases or loot-boxes.

You can use PayPal if you’re worried about banks.

7

Hello, is there a way to contact with you regarding source code of a miner in c# , is it posible to know any posibilities from you to buy/get it?

8

Really interesting. So is this still planned to release?

Only one thing ETH is planned to move to to proof of stake? but other crypto currencys could be mined.

9

Oh just noticed the 3GB gpu mem requirement. Is that now 4GB? Would reduce number of possible players fast.

10

Hi, I’m in the process of talking about utilization with a Germany based company.

The ubiq DAG size grows pretty slowly so the gpu mem requirement is about 2-3 GB for the next few years at least.

11

Hey man, is this project still alive? Currently working on the same idea …

12

Competition dude, probably should’ve released it earlier.
I’m glad. This is beneficial for the player because developers can use this instead of loot boxes or other in-game purchases. This is also beneficial for the developer who using this can put all of their effort into making the actual game instead of having to think about monetization.

13

I have decided not to release the uMiner.

The Unity asset store forbids the use of GNU 3 code and some parts of the miner are based on GNU code, so it cannot be placed in asset store.

14

This would be a cool open source project to have on GitHub. I’m sure a lot of developers would love to collaborate. Maybe adding compatibility with other cryptocurrencies.

1 Like
15

Indeed, thought of the same.
I like the idea of using this as an ad alternative, but I think in many cases it hurts game performance to much.

16

Performance shouldn’t be a problem. There is a throttling mechanism implemented so that the fps stays above certain threshold, such as 60 fps and the excess power is used to mine.

The real problem with the GNU lisence is that the game has to be GNU also if uses GNU code.

17

We are really interested in this plugin and would like to paying off to get it… I also PM you for more info, do let us know. :slight_smile:

18

I would love this, I am both a blockchain dev and a game dev!

19

thank god is not out, last thing we need is storm of asset flips with miners
for now unity logo = bad games, no need to make it unity logo = miners

20

Answer please: can i use 100% of Gpu if thease game to make money for mine