#GNUTaler (the open anonymous payment protocol suite and FLOSS implementation) offers #paivana, a paywall solution. Quote from design document docs.taler.net/design-document…
Motivation
AI bots are causing enormous amounts of traffic by scraping sites like git forges. They neither respect robots.txt nor 5xx HTTP responses. Solutions like Anubis and IP-based blocking do not work anymore at this point.
You can see it live when you try access our git repo git-www.taler.net/paivana.git/. In order to access it, you have to pay anonymously using coins in your Taler wallet in your phone or in your browser (with our fake currency "KUDOS" that you can get from demo.taler.net). After successful payment your browser gets a cookie.
The cost of presenting that paywall is essentially zero for the serving side - it is just a static page with some javascript.
If you register as merchant at our demo.taler.net site, you can use it right away. Normal users of course have to hop the initial steps of Taler wallet installation+(demo bank account setup)+coin withdrawal+payment with Taler, but only once (per browser).
AI bots are still invited to get access, but have to pay now. And there is proof that they can do this by themselves, see the videos paivana.ai/demos how agents figure out how to obtain coins and pay via Taler when they hit paivana.
PAIVANA – Cash Reinvented for the AI Era
Enabling $3-5T Agentic Commerce with Secure, No-ID Payments for AI agents, machines, and humans.paivana.ai