Will I get any benefit from making my controller method async?

I have this controller method below. First example is sync, second example is async. I didn't add an await, but put it into a task.Run()

Will there be any benefit in making it async here and would this be the proper way to do it?

sync version

[HttpGet("authsignature")]
public IActionResult GetSignSignature([FromQuery] string folder) {
  
  DateTime foo = DateTime.Now;
  long timeStamp = ((DateTimeOffset)foo).ToUnixTimeSeconds();
  var p = new Dictionary <string, object>();

  p.Add("folder", folder); 
  p.Add("timestamp", timeStamp);


  var signature = _cloudinary.Api.SignParameters(p);

  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(signature)) {
    return BadRequest(new ApiResponse(400));
  }

  return Ok(new {
    cloudUploadUrl = _config.GetSection("CloudinarySettings:CloudUploadUrl").Value,
      cloudName = _cloudinaryConfig.Value.CloudName,
      cloudApiKey = _cloudinaryConfig.Value.ApiKey,
      cloudSignature = signature,
      cloudTimeStamp = timeStamp
  });

}

async version

[HttpGet("authsignature")]
public async Task<IActionResult> GetSignSignature([FromQuery] string folder) {
  
  DateTime foo = DateTime.Now;
  long timeStamp = ((DateTimeOffset)foo).ToUnixTimeSeconds();
  var p = new Dictionary <string, object>();

  p.Add("folder", folder); 
  p.Add("timestamp", timeStamp);


  var signature = await Task.Run(() => JsonConvert.SerializeObject(_cloudinary.Api.SignParameters(p)));

  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(signature)) {
    return BadRequest(new ApiResponse(400));
  }

  return Ok(new {
    cloudUploadUrl = _config.GetSection("CloudinarySettings:CloudUploadUrl").Value,
      cloudName = _cloudinaryConfig.Value.CloudName,
      cloudApiKey = _cloudinaryConfig.Value.ApiKey,
      cloudSignature = signature,
      cloudTimeStamp = timeStamp
  });

}

Take a look at the "Synchronous vs Asynchronous request handling" section of my article on async ASP.NET.

In summary, asynchronous code allows your server to handle more requests by using fewer threads.

However, await Task.Run like in your example is not true asynchronous code: it's just placing synchronous work on the thread pool. The same thread pool used by ASP.NET to handle requests. So Task.Run is just doing a thread switch for no benefit. From later in that same article:

> You can kick off some background work by awaiting Task.Run, but there’s no point in doing so. In fact, that will actually hurt your scalability by interfering with the ASP.NET thread pool heuristics.

Assuming "SignParameters" is an actual API you're calling, then proper asynchrony would look something like this:

var signature = await _cloudinary.Api.SignParametersAsync(p);