
Ask HN: Monetizing unused server resources? - vzhou842
I have a couple $5 Digital Ocean droplets (the cheapest ones they offer) that I&#x27;m using &lt;10% CPU on. For reasons I won&#x27;t get into I can&#x27;t combine the stuff I&#x27;m running on them into one single $5 droplet. I was thinking about ways I could use my unused server resources, and think I&#x27;ve come up with a way (not involving mining crypto) that people could make $1-2 bucks a month for just running an agent that uses some CPU &#x2F; bandwidth on their over-provisioned servers.<p>I&#x27;ve thought about it some and personally don&#x27;t think this is viable because it would be too hard to convince people to run a 3rd party agent for only a couple bucks per month. I wanted to check and make sure I wasn&#x27;t wrong though - you&#x27;d have to:<p>- Make an account on a site and enter a method you could get paid
- Install a simple open-source (you can verify it&#x27;s not malicious) agent on your server and start it.
- [Optional] configure the agent to limit its resource usage OR to disable itself during pre-configured times OR to automatically disable itself if it detects CPU usage above a threshold.<p>Would you or anyone you know be interested in running an agent like this if it existed? What are your biggest concerns with running such an agent? Are there other ways of monetizing unused server resources I&#x27;m not thinking of?
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lgats
To some capacity, you are creating a product that competes with mining, which
is a rather large market.

You'll have hurdles similar to coinhive, where malicious and white-hat people
alike will both be interested in running your software.

Why not use this method to create a new crypto where the mining is actually a
useful service?

