Maxthon browser: Mining cryptocurrency by browsing the web?

The first time I ever remember seeing tabbed browsing was in the late '90s or early '00s, well before it was available in Internet Explorer or Netscape (I'm pretty sure Firefox & Chrome didn't exist yet at the time). The innovative browser where I first saw it was built on top of Microsoft's browsing engine, and called MYIE or MYIE2, not sure which.

I liked tabbed browsing so much that I switched to using that browser almost exclusively for a couple years until my employer locked down our desktops and I couldn't use it any more at work, maybe around '04 or '05. At that time, I switched to more mainstream browsers, which had adopted tabs by then, and basically forgot about MYIE2.

A few years later, maybe around 2008, I got curious what had happened to it, and learned that MYIE2 still existed, but had switched to being called "Maxthon." So I downloaded that and eventually switched to using it as my primary browser at home. Some of the innovative features that I really liked about it were:

• Reader mode, where web pages are formatted for PDF-like readability.
• Ad-block plus integration
• Ability to switch between browsing engines.
• Split screen viewing where you can view two web pages side by side in a single browser window.
• A OneNote style cloud memo pad where you can share textual notes between your computers and your cell phones.
• Access to identical book-marks from multiple computers and mobile devices.

The big drawback is that it feels sort-of bloated, especially at start-up time.

That lasted until early 2016 when the Brave browser was announced. In Brave's vision, cryptocurrency would be used to purchase ads from the browser network, and to pay users for allowing the ads past the ad blocker. I was excited at the idea of a symbiotic ecosystem where ad-producers and ad-recipients were partners, so I switched to Brave for home use, and that's what I've been using (primarily) for the last couple years.

But, the payments to users for accepting ads never materialized. I've been self-funding my wallet to pay publishers, but I grow impatient waiting for the rest of the vision to be completed.

So, around the end of last year I started looking at Maxthon again. I was surprised to see that they are also embarking on a path of paying their browser users in cryptocurrency. I haven't read the details on their "lives token", but I have been checking in every once in a while to see how they're progressing.

Image source: screen capture

Yesterday, I launched my maxthon browser and was greeted by a "Trending" topic telling me that the browswer mining plug-in is available. So I downloaded it, turned it on, and browsed to a bunch of sites. According to what I read, they do their accounting once a day at 00:00 GMT, so I launched it again tonight to see if I had received any cryptocurrency. The adjacent screen capture shows what I found.

So, it turns out that I did make a handful of tokens just for using Maxthon as my browser for one evening. I have no idea what the tokens are worth or what the underlying technology is, so I guess I have some reading to do now.

Since this is day-1, I haven't used the mining plug-in enough or learned enough about the token to recommend for or against it, but if you want to explore using a browser that pays you cryptocurrency for using it, you might want to check it out. The web site to download the browser is maxthon.com, and the download button is right on the front page. Also, the blog post, Maxthon Browser Embraces Blockchain To Take Back The Internet From Oligarchs And Give It Back To The People introduced their cryptocurrency strategy back in January.