BERLIN · MAY 2026   01 / 16
Top 5 · MasterZ × IOTA Hackathon 2026
IOTA Web Guardian

Turns AI scraping
into AI licensing.

A verifiable identity + micropayment layer in front of every page. AI agents pay per fetch. Creators get paid in real time on IOTA.
PIPELINE
401 → VP → 402 → Paid
SETTLEMENT
2.8 s first · 50 ms cached
SURFACE
WordPress · drop-in
02 / THE HOOK
02 / 16
CLOUDFLARE RADAR · 2025
“ Google scrapes 18 pages for every 1 visitor it sends back.
ChatGPT scrapes 1,500. Claude scrapes 60,000.
The economic model of the open web — you give us content, we send you readers — is dead.
AI doesn't send readers. AI keeps them.
SOURCES · CLOUDFLARE RADAR · YEAR IN REVIEW 2025
03 / THE PROBLEM
03 / 16

Traffic Apocalypse — already happened in 2025.

Publishers have lost 20% to 90% of traffic and revenue in 12 months. This is not a forecast.
−33%
Global publisher traffic
from Google
−600M
Monthly news visits lost
2.3 B → 1.7 B
−60%
Small publishers
(1k–10k daily views, 2 yrs)
SMALL · 1k–10k/day
−60%
MEDIUM · 10k–100k/day
−47%
LARGE · 100k+/day
−22%
BY SEGMENT · 2-YEAR DROP
Publisher
Drop
Stereogum ad revenue
Founder cited AI Overviews as primary cause (Nov 2025)
−70%
Business Insider organic search
−55%
HuffPost search referrals
−50%
Chegg non-subscriber traffic
−49%
Dictionary.com visits 34M→21M
−38%
SOURCES · PRESS GAZETTE · DIGIDAY · ADEXCHANGER · ALM CORP · CHARTBEAT · SIMILARWEB
04 / THE PROBLEM
04 / 16

What it means in dollars.

Traffic loss translates almost 1 : 1 into revenue loss.
SOLO BLOGGER
Niche
150k views / month
BEFORE
$18,000/yr
AFTER
$7,200/yr
LOSS
−$10.8k
−60% / yr
Half an income. From “rent covered” to “not worth it.”
MEDIUM PUBLISHER
Regional / Vertical
1.5M views / month
BEFORE
$270k/yr
AFTER
$143k/yr
LOSS
−$127k
−47% / yr
Two-to-three full-time editors cut.
LARGE PUBLISHER
Business Insider scale
display ad revenue only
100M views / month
BEFORE
$24M/yr
AFTER
$18.7M/yr
LOSS
−$5.3M
−22% / yr
Business Insider cut 21% of staff in May 2025.
Traffic doesn't vanish. It's absorbed by AI. Revenue moves with it.
SOURCES · RPM BENCHMARKS: ADITUDE, PUBLIFT 2025 · TRAFFIC TIERS: CHARTBEAT VIA AXIOS (MAR 2026) · CASES: STEREOGUM (LAPATINE, NOV 2025), BUSINESS INSIDER (SIMILARWEB), CHARLESTON CRAFTED (DIGITAL CONTENT NEXT)
05 / THE PROBLEM
05 / 16

The crawl-to-click gap.

AI bots take everything and return nothing. Pages scraped per 1 visitor sent back:
Google
18 : 1
OpenAI
Jun '25
1,700 : 1
Anthropic
Jul '25 · peak 286k Jan '25
73,000 : 1
1101001k10k100k
LOG SCALE
8.7%
of all HTML web traffic now from AI crawlers
+225%
AI bot scraping growth YoY (Akamai)
30%
of AI bots ignore robots.txt (Q4 '25)
80%
of bot activity is LLM training — not referrals
SOURCES · CLOUDFLARE RADAR 2025 · AKAMAI · ORIGINALITY.AI
06 / THE PROBLEM
06 / 16

Zero-click searches.

Even when users do search, they don't click through anymore.
ZERO-CLICK SHARE
56%
May 2024
69%
May 2025
Publishers expect another −43% drop in search referrals by 2029.
CTR WITH AI OVERVIEW
0.6%
vs 1.6% without
CLICK REDUCTION
58%
Dec '25  (34.5% in Apr)
#1 RESULT UNDER AI OVERVIEW
−79%
clicks vs baseline
USERS CLICKING AI CITATIONS
1%
Pew Research
SOURCES · SIMILARWEB · PEW RESEARCH · SEARCH ENGINE LAND · DIGIDAY · PPC LAND
07 / WHY THIS MATTERS
07 / 16

If creators stop publishing,
the AI training pipeline dries up.

01
Creators quit
→
02
Fewer good sources
→
03
AI quality degrades
→
04
Trust collapses
The web runs on an unwritten contract: you crawl, you send readers, everyone wins.
That contract has been unilaterally broken.
The only sustainable fix: make the exchange explicit and verifiable.
“If content dies, AI dies with it.

The question isn't whether AI should pay — it's how.”
08 / LANDSCAPE
08 / 16

Why current "solutions" fail.

No neutral, permissionless, programmatic layer exists — from the NYT down to a solo blogger.
robots.txt
Voluntary. 30% of AI bots ignore it.
Cloudflare AI Labyrinth / bot-blocking
Defensive only — blocks crawl but monetizes nothing.
Paywalls
Break the open web for humans too. Kill SEO.
Tollbit / Scalepost
Centralized gatekeepers. Per-publisher deals. US-only.
Lawsuits (NYT v. OpenAI…)
Years-long. Enterprise-scale only. Bloggers left out.
Licensing deals (Reddit–Google, AP–OpenAI)
Bespoke, opaque, exclusive to top 0.01% of publishers.
WHAT'S MISSING → A neutral, permissionless, programmatic layer anyone can deploy.
09 / THE SOLUTION
09 / 16
IOTA WEB GUARDIAN

A programmable paywall
that speaks agent.

A 5-step pipeline — full first-fetch handshake in ~2.8 seconds, amortized to ~77 ms via a 1-hour JWT.
STEP 01
401
Agent GET /article → challenge + nonce
STEP 02
VP
Agent presents VP → CVS verifies DID chain
STEP 03
402
Server issues quote: 1,000 nanos → addr X
STEP 04
PAY
Agent pays on IOTA L1 → returns tx digest
STEP 05
200 OK
x402 verifies on-chain → content + Guardian JWT
FIRST FETCH
DID resolution + VC verify + IOTA L1 payment + x402 settlement
~2.8 s
CACHED FETCH
JWT fast path — signature check only, no chain calls
~50 ms
AVG / FETCH
Realistic scraper workload · JWT TTL = 1 hr · 100 pages
~77 ms
First fetch registers the agent. Every subsequent fetch in the next hour is a signature check — 50 ms. Like a toll booth with an electronic pass: register once, beep-beep forever after.
FOR CREATORS
Drop-in WordPress plugin. Monetize every AI agent visit.
FOR AI AGENTS
Standard HTTP 401 / 402 flow. One-time identity setup.
FOR THE ECOSYSTEM
Every payment on IOTA L1 — public, verifiable, feeless.
10 / ARCHITECTURE
10 / 16

Three decoupled services,
one open standard.

CVS
Credential Verification Service
Resolves DIDs · validates VC chains · checks challenge nonces.
Rust · IOTA Identity SDK
x402
Payment Verification Service
Verifies on-chain IOTA L1 payment proofs. Returns settlement tokens.
HTTP 402 · x402 scheme
GUARDIAN
Enforcement Point
Ships as WordPress plugin. Portable middleware for any HTTP stack.
WordPress · reverse-proxy
IDENTITY LAYER
W3C DIDs + Verifiable Credentials on IOTA Rebased (Move VM)
PAYMENT LAYER
Native IOTA L1 transfers. Sub-second finality, feeless, Base58 digests.
STANDARD
HTTP 402 + x402 — backed by Anthropic · Base · Stripe.
AGENT → GUARDIAN (401) → CVS (verify VP) → GUARDIAN (402) → IOTA L1 (pay) → x402 (verify) → GUARDIAN (200)
11 / CHAIN CHOICE
11 / 16

Why IOTA — and not anything else.

No other L1 can deliver all five.
To build Guardian anywhere else, you'd have to stitch together 2–3 different chains.
IOTA Web Guardian is IOTA-native by technical necessity, not sponsorship.
Requirement
IOTA
Ethereum L2
Bitcoin LN
Sub-second finality
✓
~2 s
routing
Feeless micropayments
✓
✗ gas
channel $
Native DID / VC support
✓ Identity SDK
add-on
✗
On-chain auditable for regulators
✓
✓
partial
Unified identity + payments
on a single chain
KEY DIFFERENTIATOR
✓
✗
DID off-chain + L2 payment
2 stacks to stitch together
✗
no smart contracts
12 / LIVE DEMO
12 / 16

Real money. Real chain. Not a mock.

Every fetch produces an actual IOTA testnet transaction — anyone can click the digest and verify on the explorer.
wp-admin / guardian
REVENUE
142,000 nanos
TX VOL
142
AVG LATENCY
77 ms
2.8 s first · 50 ms cached
REVENUE / HOUR
LIVE PIPELINE
401 / VP / 402 / tx / 200 streamed via SSE — watch the round-trip in real time.
TIMING
FIRST FETCH
~2.8 s
CACHED (JWT)
~50 ms
AVG / FETCH
~77 ms
JWT TTL 1 hr · 100-page scraper workload
COST / FETCH
configurable per post type
1,000 nanos
explorer.iota.org/txblock/<digest>
13 / COMPETITIVE MATRIX
13 / 16

We're not competing with Cloudflare.
We're building the economic layer Cloudflare can't.

Capability
CF AI Labyrinth
Tollbit
NYT-style license
IOTA GUARDIAN
Monetizes AI traffic
✗ blocks only
✓
✓
✓
Permissionless — anyone can deploy
✗
✗
✗
✓
On-chain auditable
✗
✗
✗
✓
Per-request micropayments
✗
batched
bulk deals
✓ native
Works for a solo blogger
✗
✗
✗
✓ WP plugin
Verifiable agent identity (W3C DID/VC)
✗
✗
✗
✓
Open standard (HTTP 402 / x402)
✗
proprietary
N/A
✓
14 / MARKET SIZING
14 / 16

The addressable gap is every page
on the web that's scraped for free.

DISPLAY-AD TAM
$140B+
global digital display-ad market size (IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, 2024)
VANISHED
600M+
monthly publisher visits lost in the last 12 months
FORECAST
−43%
additional drop in news search referrals by 2029 (publisher survey)
ADDRESSABLE
8.7%
of all HTML web traffic is now AI crawlers — the surface we unlock for monetization
WHAT BLOGGERS EARN FROM THAT CRAWL VOLUME →
$0
15 / VALIDATION
15 / 16

Top 5 at MasterZ × IOTA Hackathon 2026.

PROJECTS
66
EUROPEAN DEVS
200
FINALIST RANK
Top 5
TOP 5 FINALISTS · UNRANKED
—
Textile Tracer
—
Nplex
●
IOTA Web Guardian
—
DocuNotary
—
Tangle Gate
“ IOTA Web Guardian establishes authentication requirements where AI systems must authenticate and pay to access content, enabling fair creator compensation.
— IOTA FOUNDATION · MASTERZ HACKATHON FINALE
NEXT →
Invited to the private IOTA ecosystem event in Berlin.
16 / ROADMAP & ASKS
16 / 16

Shipped. Next. Asks.

SHIPPED
Hackathon deliverable
✓Full 5-step pipeline (Rust + WP plugin)
✓IOTA testnet — DIDs + VCs + L1 payments
✓Interactive 9-step wizard TUI
✓Agent Tester web UI
✓WP dashboard — live charts + explorer links
NEXT 90 DAYS
Roadmap
→Mainnet launch (IOTA Identity pkg)
→Drupal, Ghost, reverse-proxy adapters
→Agent SDK — TypeScript + Python (1-line integration)
→Pilot with 3–5 real publishers
FROM IOTA BERLIN
Our asks
01Ecosystem endorsement + co-marketing with the IOTA Identity team
02Intros to Web3 publisher networks (Mirror, Paragraph, Farcaster Frames)
03Alignment with emerging x402 standard working groups
04Mainnet launch support + faucet sponsorship for the pilot
Pay-per-fetch, not pay-per-lawsuit. Let's build the rails for the agentic web — together.