Is it possible to generate bitcoins with a Google Chrome extension?

I just came across Rlweb's Bitcoin Generator, a Chrome extension that claims to be the "first google chrome extension creating Bitcoins".

This extension looks quite shady to me, they don't even have a link to their website. Is it a scam?

Would it at least in theory be possible to write a miner application as a browser extension?
With GPU support?

Edit: For completeness, I found another Chrome extension named Bitcoin Miner.
This one looks more legit, but it says it's a Flash game. It doesn't really generate bitcoins, or does it?

Nicolas Kaiser

Posted 2011-09-03T21:57:17.353

Reputation: 379

Answers

The Bitcoin Miner extension is simply this flash game. Rlweb's Bitcoin Generator does not seem to do anything at the moment. As far as I understand from the description, this should be a client for the bitp.it pool, but it just adds a button to chrome that shows some text.

Mining with your browser is possible. There is an open source javascript CPU miner, but it is no longer being developed because the difficulty is too high to mine with Javascript. Like Evil Spork said, other alternatives supporting WebCL and other browser plugins are coming up, but I don't know of any for Google Chrome.

nmat

Posted 2011-09-03T21:57:17.353

Reputation: 10 879

Well, I cannot speak for that specific generator. However there has been a javascript generator already in use and Chrome extentions are I believe javascript based, so it is very possible.

The javascript generator only uses CPU mind you, and is quite slow.

As for using the GPU, that is a possibility with some of the browser plugins out there, such as Unity. However a native browser? not very likely, they try very hard to restrict hardware access.

Evil Spork

Posted 2011-09-03T21:57:17.353

Reputation: 491

4There have been javascript miners that use GPU, at least on Firefox. – ripper234 – 2011-09-03T23:14:44.570

Show me? I'm rather curious how they managed it. – Evil Spork – 2011-09-03T23:17:42.303

KradMiner was once alive, now I'm getting 502 errors. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9876.0

– ripper234 – 2011-09-03T23:19:55.903

2ah, it uses a firefox plugin WebCL, so.. as I said. – Evil Spork – 2011-09-04T00:33:16.610