new blog post: against proof of waste
https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/2025-03-28-against-proof-of-waste.en.html
As web servers get overwhelmed by LLM bots, some operators are resorting to programs that demand visiting web clients to perform some relatively expensive computation to be granted access to the website. This is called Proof of Work, but when that computation doesn't yield any useful results, it might as well be called Proof of Waste. Why not get clients to compute something useful and valuable, so that LLM scrapers become an essentially infinite supply of computing power, and our servers pay for themselves and for the creative works we put in them?
https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/2025-03-28-against-proof-of-waste.en.html
As web servers get overwhelmed by LLM bots, some operators are resorting to programs that demand visiting web clients to perform some relatively expensive computation to be granted access to the website. This is called Proof of Work, but when that computation doesn't yield any useful results, it might as well be called Proof of Waste. Why not get clients to compute something useful and valuable, so that LLM scrapers become an essentially infinite supply of computing power, and our servers pay for themselves and for the creative works we put in them?
