robots.txt was a suggestion.
This isn't.
Tollgate makes AI agent access enforceable at the protocol layer. Publishers gate content with a two-line SDK and receive USDC micropayments directly in their wallet. Agents pay automatically, or don't get in.
Agents scrape billions of pages. Publishers get nothing.
AI companies train on, summarize, and resell your content at scale. robots.txt asks them nicely to stop. Most don't, because there is no cost to ignoring it — it's an honor system with no honor and no enforcement. Tollgate changes the economics: access requires payment, and payment is verified on-chain before a byte of content is served.
Three steps. Zero trust required.
The entire flow — detection, challenge, payment, verification — runs at the HTTP layer. No webhooks, no callbacks, no async settlement lag.
Agent hits your content
An AI crawler requests your page. Tollgate's SDK detects it via user-agent, header fingerprinting, and datacenter IP scoring — before serving a single byte.
Detects: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Scrapy, python-requests, and 20+ others
HTTP 402: pay to continue
The server returns HTTP 402 with an x402 challenge envelope — price in micro-USDC, your wallet's ATA as recipient, and a signed nonce bound to the request.
The agent's SDK reads the envelope, builds a USDC SPL transfer, signs it, and submits to Solana.
On-chain verification, content unlocked
The server verifies the transaction against Solana RPC — confirms amount, recipient ATA, and challenge binding. No double-spend. Content released.
Payment lands directly in your wallet. No intermediary, no custodian, no API key.
One protocol. Both sides of the market.
Publishers gate their content. Agents pay for access. Each SDK is self-contained and works independently — install only what your side needs.
Drop-in middleware for Express, Next.js, Fastify, and Cloudflare Workers. Provide your Solana wallet — payments land there directly.
import { createPaywall } from "tollgate-sdk";
import { expressMiddleware } from "tollgate-sdk/express";
const paywall = createPaywall({
walletAddress: process.env.SOLANA_WALLET_ADDRESS,
network: "mainnet-beta",
protect: ["/articles/*", "/blog/*"],
basePriceMicroUsdc: 1_000, // $0.001 per crawl
});
app.use(expressMiddleware(paywall));
// req.paywallPayment is available on paid routes
app.get("/articles/:slug", (req, res) => {
res.json({ paid: true, sig: req.paywallPayment?.signature });
});Publisher SDK docs Gives any AI agent the ability to pay HTTP 402 paywalls automatically, safely, and within configurable budget limits.
import {
createAgentPaywallClient,
fromKeypairFile,
} from "tollgate-agent-sdk";
const client = createAgentPaywallClient({
network: "mainnet-beta",
signer: fromKeypairFile(), // ~/.config/solana/id.json
maxAmountMicroUsdc: 10_000, // hard cap: $0.01 per request
maxTotalMicroUsdc: 1_000_000, // session budget: $1.00
});
// Drop-in fetch — auto-pays 402s, retries transparently
const res = await client.fetch("https://site.com/articles/ai");
const data = await res.json();
console.log("paid:", res.paywallPayment?.signature);
console.log("spend:", client.spend());Agent SDK docs Built for production from day one
Multi-signal bot detection
User-agent patterns, header fingerprinting, datacenter CIDRs, and reverse DNS verification — scored and combined for low false-positive classification.
Replay protection
Every transaction signature is cached after redemption. A payment can only unlock content once. Survives server restarts.
Wallet-native, no custodian
You provide a Solana address. Payments flow directly from agent to your wallet ATA. Tollgate never holds funds or keys.
Zero latency for humans
Bot detection runs entirely in-process. Human visitors see no overhead — no network call, no redirect, no additional round-trip.
Framework-agnostic adapters
Native adapters for Express, Next.js App Router middleware, Fastify plugin, and Cloudflare Workers — no glue code required.
Sign-In With Solana analytics
Connect your wallet to the hosted dashboard and see payments received, top bots, and top paid pages — scoped to your wallet without API keys.
Integration takes minutes, not days
npm install tollgate-sdk
# Set your wallet — this is the only config required.
# Payments land directly in this Solana address.
SOLANA_WALLET_ADDRESS=YourSolanaWallet...The honest answer to the obvious question
Micropayments require settlement infrastructure with near-zero fees and sub-second finality. Existing payment rails weren't built for $0.001 transactions. That's the entire reason blockchain is here — not ideology, just math.
Why not just use a payment processor?
Credit card processors take 2.9% + $0.30 — more than the payment itself at micropayment scale. USDC on Solana settles in ~0.4s with sub-cent fees. The economics only work on-chain.
Why Solana specifically?
~400ms finality, $0.00025 average transaction fee, a mature USDC SPL token with a Circle-issued devnet faucet. Ethereum L1 fees alone would exceed the payment value.
Why USDC and not native SOL?
USDC is price-stable. Pricing content at $0.001 means $0.001 — not 0.0000065 SOL today, something different tomorrow. Publishers set prices in dollars, not volatile tokens.
What stops someone from building a centralized version?
Nothing. But on-chain verification means Tollgate's server doesn't need to trust the agent — or be trusted by the agent. The Solana RPC is the neutral arbiter. No payment processor account to ban you.
| Settlement method | Cost per $0.001 tx | Finality | Viable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe / card | $0.30+ | 1–3 days | ✗ |
| Ethereum L1 | $0.50–$5+ | ~12s | ✗ |
| Ethereum L2 (Arbitrum) | ~$0.01 | ~2s | ~ |
| Solana USDC ← Tollgate | <$0.001 | ~400ms | ✓ |
You keep every cent of payments received
Tollgate never takes a cut of on-chain payments. The plan fee covers infrastructure and support — the USDC goes straight to your wallet.
Everything you need to ship and collect payments.
Hosted facilitator, dashboard, and priority support.
Volume pricing, dedicated infrastructure, custom terms.
All plans include both SDKs under MIT license. No transaction fee from Tollgate — only Solana network fees (~$0.00025/tx).
Common questions
The consent layer agents can't ignore.
Two lines of code to gate your content. One install to pay for access. USDC in your wallet within 400ms of the agent's first crawl.