This is already a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubis_(software)

Yes, but:

> Although Anubis could be altered to mine cryptocurrency to serve as proof of work, Iaso has rejected this idea: "I don't want to touch cryptocurrency with a 20 foot pole."

Which in my mind is a shame. Crypto is an absolute mess, yes, but this seems like an elegant way to get something back for putting things out there.

The problem is that much of the cost is borne by humans accessing the sites. People generally get real mad when they find out you’re using their computers to mine crypto.

Mining crypro doesn't materialize money. You have to exchange it for real money which means taking a private individual's money in exchange for scam tokens.

This is the problem crypto fans refuse to acknowledge. The money doesn't magically appear, you're taking it from someone else and letting them hold the bag when whatever cryptocurrency you choose inevitably blows up, fails, or rug-pulls. It's unethical to engage with at all because you're still participating in scamming real money out of private individuals

Not necessarily. You can spend your cryptocoins with any number of businesses and it is very much the choice of those businesses to accept them or not. No private individuals need be involved.

Note also that any non-crypto currency can also devalue at any moment, although perhaps not to the same extent. Holding anything of any perceived value carries a risk and also a potential reward.

But that will be a hassle for human visitors as well. A web doing proof-of-work to browse, will be a disaster for phones with their limited batteries, etc.

To be specific, it would be more of a hassle for human visitors than for the AI companies with infinite money and specialized browsers.

The idea would be that AI companies would still be forced to do this proof of work. Anubis proved the idea

I don’t think Anubis proves the idea much though. I feel the main reason it’s worked is that AI companies haven’t yet tried to bypass it.

And AI companies still scrape Anubis protected websites, it just forces them to not DDOS the website

or you know, just charge for your content if you believe it to be valuable enough for the fee being charged.

Yes, but that tends to limit the reach of your content. Hence why a lot of people reach for ads.

Between seeing ads and doing a little bit of proof-of-work for the author, I'd choose the latter.