> And if we can't tell bot from human, why would bots choose to pay rather than just use the public endpoints we serve to our customers?
Assuming technical indistinguishability, the only solution is what was originally proposed for email: balanced net $0 charges for "normal user" usage patterns (i.e. payments from - payments to = $0).
If you x402 everything, and an average user access 5 pages, but a bot accesses 500 (or 5x100 times), then you've still achieved a substantial price delta that you could offset via a rebate
The real rub is about uniqueness attribution, as being able to differentiate 20 distinct real users from 1 bot w/ 20 proxies is the crux of anything above.
Assuming technical indistinguishability, the only solution is what was originally proposed for email: balanced net $0 charges for "normal user" usage patterns (i.e. payments from - payments to = $0).
If you x402 everything, and an average user access 5 pages, but a bot accesses 500 (or 5x100 times), then you've still achieved a substantial price delta that you could offset via a rebate
The real rub is about uniqueness attribution, as being able to differentiate 20 distinct real users from 1 bot w/ 20 proxies is the crux of anything above.