christopher mckenzie@chris_mckenzie503

Tollbot is a certbot based tool that proxies a website automatically (similar to certbot) so that AI scrapers will have to pay a fee in order to scrape the content It starts with both a backwards compatible variation of robots.txt with payment information within the comments and a 402 redirect to a standard payment gateway. The user runs tollbot like they run certbot on any system. They connect their wallet, choose the host, and then price out the endpoints in USDC/unit amount If the Crawl-delay in the robots.txt or some other metric is violated, the host gets returned 402s for the restricted endpoints and then must fulfill the payment to continue upon which point they get a Proxy-Authorization (RFC 9110) header and can retry. proxy-authorization token then acts as a "balance" and is independent of any other header or ip src information.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc, developers will build the next generation of agentic commerce systems using Arc with USDC. Explore a world where AI agents and web services can pay for APIs, data, compute, and content in dynamic, usage-based ways, while Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality. This hackathon is supported by Google & Google DeepMind, with a dedicated challenge and $40,000 in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) credits awarded for the best use of Gemini models and Google AI Studio. 📅 January 9 – 24, 2026 • Jan 9 – 23 (Online Phase) – Collaborate and build online with developers and AI innovators from around the world. All projects must be submitted by the end of the online phase on January 23rd. • Jan 23 (On‑site Build Day – San Francisco, CA) – Selected participants will be invited to an exclusive in‑person session to refine their projects and connect directly with mentors. • Jan 24 (On‑site Demos & Awards – San Francisco, CA) – Live pitching sessions to a panel of judges and ecosystem partners, followed by the official winner announcement. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (Jan 23–24): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆Compete for $50,000 in USDC & GCP Credits. 📍 On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now - sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!