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Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#51

Post by gilfaethwy »

axus wrote: post #34
hedora wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize humans are going to be the first wave of collateral damage right? I already basically cannot browse the internet for technical information, since most high-quality forums are behind captchas that block my iPhone. If I ask an agent to do it, it does better at finding the small percentage of sources not hosted by cloudflare. However, it generally cannot hit open-access / public domain sources (like the curr…

Would you be willing for Cloudflare to "Know their customer" (you) and pay 3 cents to access the forum, instead of filling in the captcha?

Can't speak for GP, but I wouldn't - privacy is already eroding at a startling rate, and more KYC for things that really don't need it is just a further affront to human rights. (See also the FCC's recent request for comments on requiring government-issued ID to use a cell phone.)

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#53

Post by ryan_n »

jf93ap29sh wrote: post #17
bilekas wrote: post #9

Am I understanding this correct in that you can basically automate monetizing your web/api content to everyone or just agents ? Because I would be very much in support of charging agents per request, but I would want to still offer humans a free experience.

If not built-in, you can probably put it together through Cloudflare itself. If a request goes to the protected path, if detected as bot: hard HTTP redirect to the path set in the monetization gateway, if human: allow and don't redirect.

Is there actually a reliable way to differentiate human from bot?

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#55

Post by ygouzerh »

colesantiago wrote: post #15

Can the agents use debit cards? Stablecoins doesn't make sense here and prefer not to use crypto at all.

Actually, x402 was created because using a credit card programmatically is very difficult.

The whole business of Stripe is based on that: it's so hard for developers to do, and so many regulations, that they would rather pay an another company to do so.

Crypto can be sent just using a contract.transfer() call

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#56

Post by hungryhobbit »

horsawlarway wrote: post #45

I'm going to poke at a downstream consequence here. Lets say this catches on (in some form or another, whether in this precise implementation or not). So assume we have a world where resources can be gated by a payment wall that agents can interact with. I'm also assuming that world continues to have agents that are majority hosted and run by 3rd parties (ex - google/anthropic/openai/xai/etc). --- At what point can I…

>I'm also assuming that world continues to have agents that are majority hosted and run by 3rd parties (ex - google/anthropic/openai/xai/etc).

That seems like a pretty big assumption, given that local models are only like a year behind frontier ones (or less).

When you consider that, along with the completely unsustainable business model of all the major 3rd parties, I think a far more realistic view of our AI future is that AI will largely be commodified: it won't run on a few specialized companies, it will run on your hardware, or on budget providers (think an "AWS of AI").

Frontier AI will almost certainly continue to exist, but will be focused on specific niches.

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#57

Post by hungryhobbit »

skinfaxi wrote: post #37
nzeid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds here. Everyone just uses Cloudflare, which is not a bad thing by itself. But do they _have_ to? Is managing your own edge really that terrifying?

> Is managing your own edge really that terrifying? It's about convenience, not fear. Cloudflare is free for most companies until you need more advanced features.

So a fear of being inconvenienced then?

I'll show myself out ...

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#58

Post by ihsw »

ryan_n wrote: post #53
jf93ap29sh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not built-in, you can probably put it together through Cloudflare itself. If a request goes to the protected path, if detected as bot: hard HTTP redirect to the path set in the monetization gateway, if human: allow and don't redirect.

Is there actually a reliable way to differentiate human from bot?

[dead]

Re: Monetization Gateway: Charge for any resource behind Cloudflare via x402

#59

Post by sandeepkd »

_pdp_ wrote: post #19

I might be in the minority here, but although x402 sounds useful, it seems to me that adoption will be an uphill struggle, especially for per-request micropayments. The most likely scenario is Stripe, or someone similar, creating an agentic API connected to the agent owner linked account or something along those lines. I am not sure how this would work with 3DS, or whether it would be acceptable at all, since these k…

I dont think the x402 is the core of discussion here, if anything its been hijacked for who knows what. It seems like Cloudflare wants to be the traffic gateway for everyone that controls the access and now wants to start charging for the same.

The biggest challenge here is to distinguish between a bot and real user. Guess the big AI players would get free ticket to crawl the data and humans would be just left to prove themselves to access the content.

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