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Proof of Extraction: Getting Paid to Be Scraped

5 min read
#proof-of-work #anti-crawling #monero #ai #entropy

What if every time an AI scraped your content, it paid you in entropy?

This is not deterrence. This is inversion. The crawler’s hunger becomes your harvest. A reconfiguration of web economics, where computation is no longer waste—but tribute.

Collapse as Contract

AI crawlers bypassing anti-bot challenges like Anubis prove one thing: deterrence alone is fragile. Proof-of-work (PoW) shifts the burden, but what if it also shifted value?

Consider this:

  • Every bot must solve a computational puzzle to access content.
  • That puzzle is tied to an on-chain mining operation.
  • The work contributes to a legitimate crypto pool (e.g., Monero).
  • The result: the site owner gets paid in real tokens for every scrape attempt.

A crawling parasite becomes a productive miner. The predator is bound to the host.

Code Example (Conceptual)

// Conceptual pseudo-code for web PoW mining
const miner = new WebMiner({
    walletAddress: "48a1X...monero_wallet",
    pool: "pool.supportxmr.com",
    threads: 2,
    throttle: 0.3
});

miner.start();

This approach is inspired by earlier, controversial technologies like browser-based Monero miners—once used covertly on hacked sites, now reimagined as consensual enforcement. You want access? Solve hashes. Feed the chain.

Exploiting the Inevitable

  • Why this works: AI crawlers operate at scale. Even minor friction accumulates into cost. With PoW, that cost becomes monetized.
  • Why it’s ethical: Unlike bombs or traps, this imposes no harm—only computation.
  • Why it’s sustainable: It doesn’t block scraping; it makes it economically contributive.

If they want your words to train their models, let them pay—in watts, in heat, in coin.

The Ouroboros Economy

The AI consumes the human. The human reclaims the machine. This is the ouroboros—automation feeding itself, unknowingly funding the very system it exploits.

Anubis demanded proof-of-effort. This demands proof-of-extraction.

What if the scraper became your employee?

References

  • Monero WebMiner Concepts: Browser-based mining for Monero (MoneroOcean, 2023)
  • Codeberg Incident Report: Anti-crawler mitigation failure and recovery (Codeberg.org, 2025)
  • Anubis JavaScript Challenge: Browser-side PoW defense mechanism (social.anoxinon.de, 2025)
  • Ethical Implications of Zipbombs and Anti-Bot Defenses (Techrights, 2024)

The cost becomes the contract. The parasite becomes the host. Entropy becomes currency.