CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

A few months back I built a cryptographic alternative to CAPTCHAs called Ghost Keys[1] that uses a small donation as proof-of-humanity. For donating you get an anonymous keypair that works across services without repeated CAPTCHAs. The economic friction doesn't scale for bot operators, and donations fund our non-profit[2].

[1] https://freenet.org/ghostkey/

[2] https://freenet.org/

> The economic friction doesn't scale for bot operators

Does the number of keys need to scale? If $1 buys a key for life, and signing can be easily automated why would it stop bots?

Keys embed approximate timestamps, so services can set age limits. The system was designed for Freenet integration where reputation can be attached to keys - repeat abuse would degrade a key's public reputation over time.

In the event ticket situation, how does this change the economics compared to just adding $1 to the ticket price? (or whatever your minimum donation threshold is)

It would add $1 to the ticket price, the goal is more to replace CAPTCHAs (which cost essentially nothing to defeat these days), but you're right that it wouldn't be a silver bullet in the ticket scalping scenario.