What is Massive?
Massive™ is a cross-platform software development kit that lets your app users opt in to pay for premium features, content, or services with a little of their unused computing resources.
How does Massive work?
The Massive SDK enables a third way besides ads and paywalls to monetize your apps and a third pricing tier between free and paid to do so with. Your users who opt in pay with an imperceptible amount of their computing resources rather than with personal attention and data or money.
The SDK takes care of consuming resources imperceptibly for you by analyzing anonymous telemetry data. You’re responsible for making sure users always have access to pause, opt out of, and activate tooling to monitor resource consumption after they’re prompted with and accept your clear terms in this format:
The Hello World app lets you read the phrase “Hello world!” on your computer screen in exchange for a small amount of your unused processing power, storage, and bandwidth managed by Massive. You can monitor and control this resource use anytime by choosing Resource usage from the app menu.
Your idle computing resources are used to mine cryptocurrency, run scientific simulations, and perform other distributed tasks, which may increase electricity consumption or decrease battery life (see Massive’s FAQ for details).
Pressing Accept indicates that you agree to Massive’s license and privacy policy.
Why do app developers use Massive?
Massive provides a monetization alternative that outperforms the low average revenue per user generated by ads and low average conversion rate resulting from paywalls (and provides your users with a payment alternative that avoids ads’ hidden productivity, autonomy, privacy, bandwidth, processing, and electricity costs and paywalls’ lack of inclusivity). We’ve blogged about how the metrics compare.
Where can Massive be tried?
After becoming an app partner, you’ll be able to build and test a sample app that includes Massive. We also plan to publish case studies of consumer integrations, some of which our user FAQ already links to.
Who does Massive partner with?
Massive is creating a two-sided marketplace for the supply and demand of spare computing capacity. In addition to app partners who use the Massive SDK to fund features, content, and services, we have blockchain partners who use the Massive network to accelerate decentralization and we’re opening the network to more and more types of workloads.
How do Massive partners profit?
Massive combines the small amounts of user-contributed resources into a supercomputer that generates revenue by mining cryptocurrency, decentralizing blockchain infrastructure, running scientific simulations, and performing general distributed tasks. App partners are earning $0.10 to $0.20 per user per month, which has been consistently increasing:
How does Massive profit?
Massive retains a share of the revenue generated from distributed-computing tasks.
How are Massive partners paid?
App partners are granted dashboard access to monitor revenue generated, which updates hourly, and are paid the balance monthly via PayPal. All partner earnings, whether denominated in cryptocurrencies or other currencies, are exchanged for and reported in dollars. Partners never have to interact with cryptocurrency.
What does Massive cryptomine?
Massive mines from a basket of ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies like Monero, based on what’s most profitable at a given time.
What platforms does Massive support?
So far, the Massive SDK is available for 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and up, which 99.2% of Windows users have, and macOS 10.10 and up, which 98.3% of macOS users have. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow our blog to find out when we support more platforms.
How can Massive be added to an app?
Sign up to become an app partner then follow our developer directions. You should be able to integrate Massive into your app and start generating revenue in minutes.
Are there requirements to use Massive?
See our launch checklist to review if your Massive-integrated app is currently compliant with our policies.
Is Massive safe to use?
Massive samples anonymous telemetry data to run imperceptibly, during low-usage conditions, so won’t interfere with your app’s functionality. The SDK likewise complies with regulatory regimes worldwide, the GDPR in the EU, the CCPA in the US, the LGPD in Brazil, and the IT Act in India, and is whitelisted by antivirus engines (as shown by VirusTotal):
Occasionally, antivirus engines incorrectly identify innocuous files as malware. We monitor Massive files to proactively discover such false positives then work with antivirus vendors to quickly correct any that affect Massive.
Do app stores allow cryptomining?
While most major app stores don’t have anti-cryptomining policies, the Google Play Store, App Store, and Mac App Store do. The Massive SDK is compatible with Windows and macOS apps now but can generate revenue in ways other than mining cryptocurrency if and when extended to ecosystems like Android and iOS in which distribution via app stores dominates.
Does Massive waste energy?
Although electricity prices are different across the world, Massive cryptomines and performs other distributed-computing tasks profitably on average so consumes an average of just a few cents’ worth of electricity per user per month. Users can further monitor and control the SDK’s resource consumption:
As of 2021, this consumption (and all the electricity ever consumed by our company) is carbon neutral through the purchase of offset credits. We’ll be posting details about our emissions calculations and neutralization methodology on our blog in the upcoming year.
What if a user opts out of Massive?
Users must be able to pause, quit, opt out of, or uninstall Massive (and vice versa) at any time. You can register a callback function with the SDK to take appropriate action, such as downgrading access, if they do.
What is decentralization as a service?
See how Massive can help decentralize your blockchain or web3 project.
Is Massive itself decentralized?
Massive is highly distributed, with nodes in 92% of the countries in the world, but not yet fully decentralized. We’ll announce on our blog how we’re decentralizing Massive’s governance.
Is Massive a blockchain company?
We describe ourselves as blockchain adjacent. Massive doesn’t operate a blockchain or cryptocurrency and sometimes generates revenue by performing tasks unrelated to either, but we do work with blockchain projects and often mine cryptocurrency.
Who created Massive?
Massive is developed by a team of systems, interface, privacy, and security experts.
Why was Massive created?
We started Massive to give app and web developers a monetization alternative to the minimal revenue per user generated by online advertising (and to give users a payment alternative to advertising’s attention-grabbing, emotion-manipulating, privacy-violating experience). Our origin story details this reasoning.
Did we miss something? If you have any other questions, contact us.
What is Massive?
Massive™ is a tool used by app developers to let you opt in to pay for premium features, content, and services with a little of your unused computing resources.
Developers who use Massive are required to present clear offers in this format so you can make informed decisions about whether or not to accept:
The Hello World app lets you read the phrase “Hello world!” on your computer screen in exchange for a small amount of your unused processing power, storage, and bandwidth managed by Massive. You can monitor and control this resource use anytime by choosing Resource usage from the app menu.
Your idle computing resources are used to mine cryptocurrency, run scientific simulations, and perform other distributed tasks, which may increase electricity consumption or decrease battery life (see Massive’s FAQ for details).
Pressing Accept indicates that you agree to Massive’s license and privacy policy.
How does Massive work?
Massive is like Airbnb or Turo for your computer. Rather than letting you share your home or vehicle when you’re not using them, Massive lets you share any unused computing resources you have. In exchange, app developers give you access to their premium features.
To guarantee that you get a fair deal, Massive is opt-in only and apps you opt in with must include tooling so you can monitor and control resource consumption. When active, Massive consumes resources unnoticeably in the background by analyzing anonymous telemetry data and compensates developers without ever collecting your personally identifiable info.
Why do users opt in to Massive?
Opting in to Massive unlocks premium apps and features. Massive provides a payment alternative that avoids the hidden productivity, autonomy, privacy, bandwidth, processing, and electricity costs of ads and lack of inclusivity of paywalls (and provides the developers of your apps with a monetization alternative that can fund better features than do ads’ low average revenue per user and paywalls’ low average conversion rate). We’ve blogged about these incumbent costs.
Where can Massive be tried?
Massive doesn’t develop consumer apps but has partnered with many developers who offer to let you upgrade with Massive in their apps. Depending on your geolocation, you’ll get such offers in apps like Boom 3D for Windows and Digg Desktop.
What resources does Massive use?
Massive finds and uses otherwise unused resources, possibly including your CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth but never your personal info. After opting in, you can monitor and control this resource use from Massive’s interface.
How does Massive use resources?
Massive combines the small amounts of resources contributed by users like you into a supercomputer that funds app features by mining cryptocurrency, decentralizing blockchain infrastructure, running scientific simulations, and performing general distributed tasks.
What is cryptocurrency mining?
Cryptocurrency, as a new, lightly regulated asset class, is a frequent object of media sensationalism and misinformation, price speculation, get-rich-quick schemes, outright scams, and other irrational behavior, but cryptocurrency mining involves the mundane execution of cryptographic functions, which are simply hard math problems, to output mostly random numbers that verify transactions autonomously.
The transactions can represent direct financial transactions or more abstract ones like the serving of this site’s pages to you. The verification performed by mining replaces the traditional role of a central authority so has the potential to democratize legacy systems.
What is cryptojacking?
Cryptojacking is the criminal use of a victim’s computer or device to mine cryptocurrency without their consent, which became a prevalent malware exploit in 2017 and 2018 before being detected by antivirus engines.
Apps that include Massive are forced, technically and contractually, to expose prominent opt-in offers and usage controls and to respect Massive’s resource limits. Any effort by an app developer to circumvent these measures that we detected or were made aware of would result in our immediate termination of the developer’s right to include Massive.
What does Massive cryptomine?
Massive mines from a basket of ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies like Monero, based on what’s most efficient at a given time.
Are there other ways to cryptomine?
There are plenty of alternative tools unaffiliated with Massive that are available to mine cryptocurrency, including XMR-Stak and XMRig.
Why does Massive cryptomine?
Cryptocurrency mining let us bootstrap a distributed supercomputer that could pay developers enough to ditch their in-app ads. The network has achieved sufficient scale that cryptomining is becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of how Massive uses resources.
Does Massive affect performance?
Massive is designed to be unnoticeable when active, using minimal resources in the background during low-usage conditions. You can monitor, pause, or opt out of this resource use at any time from Massive’s interface.
Does Massive affect electricity cost?
Massive consumes electricity when running like all computer programs. Although electricity prices are different worldwide, Massive cryptomines and performs other distributed tasks profitably on average so costs an average of a few cents per month to use.
As of 2021, this use (and all the electricity ever used by our company) is carbon neutral through the purchase of offset credits. We’ll be posting details about our emissions calculations and neutralization methodology on our blog in the upcoming year.
Does Massive affect hardware lifetime?
Massive uses minimal computing resources, totaling an average of a few cents’ worth of monthly electricity consumption, so should minimally affect the lifetime of modern hardware. One day, Massive may even help extend the lifetime of older hardware by making obsolescent resources valuable again.
Is Massive safe to use?
Massive doesn’t collect any personal info and executes all first- and third-party code in a sandboxed environment for further data protection. We comply with worldwide privacy regulations, including the GDPR in the EU, the CCPA in the US, the LGPD in Brazil, and the IT Act in India, and we work with antivirus vendors to make sure Massive is free of viruses and other malware (as shown by VirusTotal):
How can Massive be enabled?
When prompted with an in-app offer to upgrade to premium features, content, or services with Massive, you can decide if you want to accept or not given the terms of the exchange.
How can Massive be controlled?
Every app that includes Massive must also include usage controls directly in the app’s interface or in a standard system location. In Windows, open the usage controls from the app or click the Massive icon in your taskbar. In macOS, open the usage controls from the app or click the Massive icon in your menu bar. You can then opt in to, opt out of, monitor, pause, unpause, or quit Massive’s resource use:
How can Massive be uninstalled?
In Windows, open the Start menu, go to Settings > Apps > Apps & features, choose the Massive app, then press the Uninstall button. In macOS, open the Applications folder then drag and drop the Massive app onto the Trash icon in your Dock.
What happens if Massive is disabled?
You can pause, quit, opt out of, or uninstall Massive anytime. What happens after you do is at the discretion of the developers whose apps you opted in with, but usually you lose access to their features, content, or services. You can enable Massive again to restore your access.
Who created Massive?
Massive is developed by a team of privacy, security, systems, and interface experts.
Why was Massive created?
We started Massive to give app and web users a payment alternative to the attention-grabbing, emotion-manipulating, privacy-violating experience of online advertising (and to give developers a monetization alternative to advertising’s minimal revenue per user). Our origin story details this reasoning.
How does the Massive Engine get on my computer?
Massive’s software is distributed with other software to eliminate or reduce costs to end-users and generate revenue for developers The installation of our engine is always by user opt-in. Some software packages require the Massive Engine to be active in order to use the software. In these cases, disabling or removing the Massive engine will cause that software not to function. In other cases, Massive is a companion to the software and functions independently. Please see the software’s End User Agreement to determine any dependencies.
How will network resources be used?
Network resources will be used by our business partners to conduct research and business intelligence. Content will be filtered to protect the end-user from excessive, abusive, fraudulent, malicious, illegal, and risky behavior. Network resources will be utilized in a manner similar to other computing resources so as to not impact the end user’s activities and will be capped so as to not be excessive in accordance with Internet Service Providers standards.
What is meant by nominal resources?
We take the average measurement of resources utilized during the idol time. While the Massive engine is in use, there can and will be spikes of resources used when calculations and other activities are initiated, this spike will be temporary. The end goal is for the Engine’s activities to be unnoticed by the user of the computer.
At this time we have received reports of two copies of the Massive engine running when AdBlock Fast is installed alongside other products using the Massive engine. This can lead to multiple excessive spikes in resource utilization. It is recommended that the Massive Engine only be enabled for AdBlock Fast or Other applications at this time. We are engineering a fix for this conflict in future versions
Did we miss something? If you have any other questions, contact us.