Charge AI botsper request in USDC.
A dashboard and middleware library for publishers. Install the package, connect a Circle Wallet, and every protected URL starts billing bots in USDC via the open x402 standard. Priced live by Gemini. Settled onchain on Arc.
AI scraping,
no payment recourse.
AI labs extract billions of dollars of content annually. Publishers have two options today: sue (years in court), or license (reserved for the top 0.01%). Every lawsuit from NYT vs OpenAI to Thomson Reuters vs Ross to Reddit vs Anthropic proves the model is broken.
The NYT has been in court with OpenAI since December 2023. News Corp got $250M over five years. For the 99% of publishers who can't afford either, there is no option today.
HTTP 402 has been reserved since 1999. Coinbase + the Linux Foundation shipped x402 in 2024. Circle shipped Arc with USDC-native gas. The rail is built. The publisher-facing product wasn't.
Middleware for Express, Hono, and Next.js. Dashboard with Circle Wallet provisioning, dynamic Gemini-priced quotes, receipt caching, audit trail, multi-chain off-ramp. MIT licensed. Running today.
Four HTTP exchanges,
one economic atom.
A crawler fetches any protected URL. No API key, no OAuth, no prior signup — agents are first-class citizens.
GET /api/articles/arc-primer
Middleware emits a signed x402 quote: price, nonce, publisher wallet. Gemini prices the quote dynamically.
HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
{"accepts":[{"amount":"1000","payTo":"0x7f3f..."}]}The bot authorizes a transfer. Circle Wallets settles onchain on Base Sepolia. Confirmation in seconds.
POST /api/articles/arc-primer X-PAYMENT: eyJ4NDAyVmVyc2lvbi...
200 OK with the article JSON plus an HMAC receipt. Next 50 reads from this agent skip onchain settlement entirely.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Tollgate-Receipt-Set: v1.eyJzaXRlIj...
Only Arc makes
the spreadsheet green.
A single $0.001 API call, settled onchain, across four chains. Arc is the only L1 where per-request pricing is mathematically profitable — by a factor of 125 over Base, 500 over Polygon, and 25,000 over Ethereum.
| Chain | Gas / tx | Net / request | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arc (USDC native) | $0.00002 | +$0.00098 | 99.2% |
| Solana | $0.00025 | +$0.00075 | 75% |
| Base | $0.0002 | +$0.0008 | 80% |
| Polygon PoS | $0.0016 | −$0.0006 | −60% |
| Ethereum L1 | $0.50 | −$0.499 | −49,900% |
Base estimates per-request gas at 20 gwei × 65k gas units, USDC-denominated. Full derivation in docs/MARGIN.md.
Built on what Circle,
Coinbase & Google shipped.
We did not invent the rail. The x402 standard, Circle's settlement stack, and Gemini's Function Calling were already there. Tollgate is the publisher layer on top: middleware, dashboard, receipt caching, reputation routing.
HTTP 402 response body, X-PAYMENT header, EIP-3009 signing scheme. Facilitators at x402.org + Coinbase CDP.
The only L1 where per-request pricing is mathematically profitable. Sub-cent per-action clearing.
Developer-controlled custodial wallets provisioned from the Tollgate dashboard in one click.
Every settled x402 quote fires a real Circle Transfer onchain. Idempotent, retry-safe, basescan-verifiable.
Publishers withdraw to Base, Ethereum, or Solana using Circle's existing infrastructure.
Three callable tools: agent reputation, site rules, recent activity. Reasoning trace persisted per quote.
Onchain reputation scores. Trusted agents get discounts, flagged ones pay premiums.
13 tables, 60+ functions. Live dashboard queries without manual WebSocket plumbing.
We didn’t build the rail.Tollgate thesis
We built the building at the end of it.
x402 is the standard. Circle is the settlement layer. Tollgate is the publisher product that makes them usable on day one.
Stop blocking bots.
Start charging them.
Install the middleware, provision a Circle Wallet, watch your first settlement land on basescan within 60 seconds. MIT licensed. No waitlist.