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.

Solana mainnet & devnetNo API key requiredMIT license
tollgate — agent access flow
settled on-chain
+$0.001 USDC

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.

100B+
Pages crawled daily by AI bots
With zero publisher compensation
$0
Revenue from robots.txt compliance
It was always just a suggestion
~0ms
Time an agent spends deciding to ignore robots.txt
There is no cost to ignoring it
robots.txt is unenforceable
No mechanism exists to prevent a bot from simply reading your content anyway. It's a text file.
Blocking by user-agent is whack-a-mole
Agents change user-agents, rotate IPs, and use residential proxies. You can't block what you can't reliably detect.
The consent layer needs teeth
The only reliable enforcement is economic. If access costs money and payment is verified on-chain, the math changes.

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.

01

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

02

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.

03

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.

AI Agenttollgate-agent-sdkGET /articlePublishertollgate-sdk402 + x402 envelopeUSDC transfer (signed)SolanaUSDC on-chainX-PAYMENT headerverify tx200 + contentPublisher Wallet+$0.001 USDC

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.

tollgate-sdk
Publisher SDK

Drop-in middleware for Express, Next.js, Fastify, and Cloudflare Workers. Provide your Solana wallet — payments land there directly.

Local bot detection — no network call for human visitors
HTTP 402 x402 envelopes with signed per-request challenges
On-chain USDC verification, replay-protected via Supabase
Adapters: Express, Next.js App Router, Fastify, Cloudflare Workers
Optional analytics dashboard via Sign-In With Solana
No API key, no signup, no custodian — wallet-only
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
tollgate-agent-sdk
Agent SDK

Gives any AI agent the ability to pay HTTP 402 paywalls automatically, safely, and within configurable budget limits.

Drop-in client.fetch() — 402s handled automatically and transparently
Hard caps: maxAmountMicroUsdc and maxTotalMicroUsdc per session
Signer helpers: keypair file, raw array, base58 secret, custom HSM/KMS
LangChain tool via paywallFetchTool(client) — OpenAI-compatible
Coalesces concurrent requests — never pays twice for the same nonce
Typed errors: PaymentRefusedError, BudgetExceededError, OnChainError
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

Publisher
Agent
bash
npm install tollgate-sdk

# Set your wallet — this is the only config required.
# Payments land directly in this Solana address.
SOLANA_WALLET_ADDRESS=YourSolanaWallet...
tollgate-sdk — MIT license

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 methodCost per $0.001 txFinalityViable?
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.

Free
$0forever

Everything you need to ship and collect payments.

Both SDKs, MIT license
Unlimited payments (you keep 100%)
Solana devnet + mainnet-beta
Express, Next.js, Fastify, Cloudflare adapters
LangChain tool integration
Bot detection: UA, headers, IP, rDNS
Community support (GitHub Issues)
Most Popular
Pro
$49/ month

Hosted facilitator, dashboard, and priority support.

Everything in Free
Hosted facilitator (no self-hosting required)
Dashboard: payments, top bots, top pages
Sign-In With Solana analytics
Webhook events per payment
Priority email support
SLA: 99.9% uptime
Enterprise
Custom

Volume pricing, dedicated infrastructure, custom terms.

Everything in Pro
Dedicated Solana RPC
Custom USDC mint support
On-premise / private cloud deployment
Custom allowlist rules per wallet
Volume discounts
Dedicated Slack channel + SLA

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.

MIT licenseNo API key requiredPayments direct to your wallet