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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

#101

Post by PhilippGille »

Currently this is for payments with stablecoins.

For Bitcoin / Lightning these kind of pay-per-request API paywalls have existed for many years already (e.g. my own from 8 years ago [1], but others as well).

Flattr [2] existed for non-crypto micropayments.

None became mainstream. I think the friction is always the extra setup on the client side. In all 3 cases the user (API consumer) has to set up a special wallet (browser extension or something for the agent) and deposit some money/crypto on the client side first. This part needs to become simpler.

[1] https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr

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

#102

Post by jjmarr »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #87
tony_cannistra wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vending machines can't be used by thousands of people from differing tax jurisdictions at once

Airports could potentially be such a place but I admit that this is a bit contrived.

Airports are such a place. That is why they have duty-free stores that are exempt from taxes so long as you take the goods out of the country. The onus is on the consumer to pay taxes at their destination.

Most countries then have a "personal exemption", where consumers are exempt from paying taxes on a certain value of goods.

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

#103

Post by lelanthran »

aianus wrote: post #73
mixedbit wrote: post #67

With payments the complexity is not only in accepting a payment, but largely in doing so legally. Someone makes a request to my company's paid service, I return 402 and get a stable coin back. Who do I invoice for this revenue? What value added tax do I apply to the invoice? If someone makes 10k paid requests within one month, do I have means of generating one invoice for them for all the usage, or is every request t…

Who do you invoice if, for example, you own a vending machine that sells chips and sodas for cash or contactless? Why couldn’t this be treated the same?

Retailers selling for cash typically don't have the same accounting requirements for revenue from cash sales.

No KYC needed, no counterparty or reciprocal VAT rules, no jurisdiction tax rules, etc. Non-cash revenue has rules attached to it.

I agree with GP - this doesn't actually solve any problems I have when recording revenue.

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

#104

Post by frizlab »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #13

I am not a fan of the growing trend that Cloudflare is the gatekeeper of the internet. Personally I will never support this company, or firewall any of my websites behind it.

Isn’t x402 an open standard anybody can implement?

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

#105

Post by lagrange77 »

mixedbit wrote: post #67

With payments the complexity is not only in accepting a payment, but largely in doing so legally. Someone makes a request to my company's paid service, I return 402 and get a stable coin back. Who do I invoice for this revenue? What value added tax do I apply to the invoice? If someone makes 10k paid requests within one month, do I have means of generating one invoice for them for all the usage, or is every request t…

> Will CloudFlare handle this for me?

Right i wondered the same. I guess Cloudflare would have to act as a Merchant of Record, like e.g. Paddle and Gumroad do. Then the end user/bot would do business with Cloudflare, and Cloudflare with us.

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

#106

Post by Jimmc414 »

penguin_booze wrote: post #98
VladVladikoff wrote: post #13

I am not a fan of the growing trend that Cloudflare is the gatekeeper of the internet. Personally I will never support this company, or firewall any of my websites behind it.

See also the deranged post from the CEO, gloating about firing employees: https://archive.is/gSrfU .

I'm in awe at how tone deaf and naive the CEO comes across in this article. It reads like a comically ominous punchline from Gavin Belson.

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

#109

Post by colinsane »

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?

i installed the playwright MCP to let my agent access walled sites (specifically ebay and WSJ). i noticed that 90% of the time it was bounced from a site, it just reached out to a different site that wasn't walled, and i think it's the right move: most information exists at multiple places on the web, it's cheaper and _faster_ to just skip over walled sources.

for the forum example: many forums have a policy to only allow access to attachments to logged-in users. i can't remember the last time i registered at a new forum just to view an attachment: the effect has always been to drive me elsewhere. no complaints -- these solutions work if your goal is to reduce load. i'm suspicious that they can drive monetization outside of a very few niches.

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

#110

Post by leros »

I don't really like the model of scrapers paying small fees. I think it devalues things.

I make money when people use my website. I don't make money when AI scrapes my content and answers the question without the user coming to my website.

I'd need scrapers to pay me 5-6 figure payments to replace the revenue they'd be taking from me if my content was easily scraped. I doubt that's ever going to happen.

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