This method of fingerprinting, called canvas fingerprinting, isn't new at all. It was originally developed in 2012 and has has been around and widely used for years. While the paper is new, it only represents a few relatively small refinements of already existant and widely deployed canvas fingerprint technology. Its something everyone should be aware of.
The legitimately scary thing is how many things you use every day that will break if you block it.
this is the original article describing the basic canvas fingerprinting technique. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~hovav/dist/canvas.pdf i think it was published in late 2012. From the numbers ive seen the canvas method already had an an accuracy rate in the high 90s (the outliers being people who are using tor, or who use anti-detect browser) or browse through VM.