Anonymous credentials: rate-limit bots and agents without compromising privacy

What problem is this trying to solve exactly?

If a computer (or “agent” in modern terms) wants to order you a pizza it can technically already do so.

The reason computers currently can’t order us pizza or book us flights isn’t because of a technical limitation, it’s because the pizza place doesn’t want to just sell you a pizza and the airline doesn’t want to just sell you a flight. Instead they have an entire payroll of people whose salaries are derived from wasting human time, more commonly know as “engagement”. In fact those people will get paid regardless if you actually buy anything, so their incentive is often to waste more of your time even if it means trading off an actual purchase.

The “malicious” uses of AI that this very article refers to are mostly just that - computers/AI agents acting on behalf of humans to sidestep the “wasting human time” issue. The fact that agents may issue more requests than a human user is because information is intentionally not being presented to them in a concise, structured manner. If Dominos or Pizza Hut wanted to sell just pizzas tomorrow they can trivially publish an OpenAPI spec for agents to consume, or even collaborate on an HPOP protocol (Hypertext Pizza Ordering Protocol) to which HPOP clients can connect (no LLMs needed even). But they don’t, because wasting human time is the whole point.

So why would any of these companies suddenly opt into this system? Companies that are after actual money and don’t profit from wasting human time are already ready and don’t have to do anything (if an AI agent is already throwing Bitcoin or valid credit card details at you to buy your pizzas, you are fine), and those that do have zero incentive to opt in since they’d be trading off “engagement” for old-school, boring money (who needs that nowadays right?).

One problem with HPOP is the chicken-egg adoption problem: There is little reason to implement HPOP because nobody will have a client for it, and little reason to build a client because nobody has implemented HPOP.

Part of this is the friction required to implement a client for a bespoke API that only one vendor offers, and the even bigger friction of building a standard.

AI and MCP servers might be able to fix this. In turn, companies will have a motivation to offer AI-compatible interfaces because if the only way to order a pizza is through an engagement farm, the AI agent is just going to order the pizza somewhere else.

If big pizza franchises wanted HPOP they could just make it the api by which their apps talk to their backend. New cross-pizza-place-apps and tools would pop up within a month

Really, they could each do their own bespoke thing as long as they didn't go out of their way to shut out other implementers.

Instant messaging used to work like this until everyone wanted to own their customer bases and lock them in, for the time-wasting aspect

That would require them and there random IT teams to get together, sit down, agree on doing this, design a common protocol, etc. - that's enough friction to make it not happen, especially given the lack of reward.

With AI browsers, all they have to do initially is not break them, and long term, each of them can individually choose to offer their API - no coordination required - and gain a slight advantage.