Description
A-Pay Web3 AI Paywall is an HTTP 402 Web3 micropayment gatekeeper for WordPress & WooCommerce that allows website owners to monetize autonomous AI crawlers, scrapers, and LLM bots (OpenAI GPTBot, Anthropic ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, ByteSpider, and Meta-ExternalAgent) on Base Layer 2.
🌟 Key Features
- 100% Free for Real Humans: Human visitors on desktop and mobile web browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) browse your site completely free without any paywalls, popups, or captchas.
- SEO Protected: Googlebot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot, and other search engines are automatically whitelisted so your search rankings and indexing remain completely intact.
- HTTP 402 Web3 Challenge Gate: Autonomous AI crawlers are presented with a cryptographic HTTP 402 Payment Required challenge specifying Base Layer 2 settlement details under EIP-712 standards.
- Voucher & Nonce Verification: Validates incoming Authorization headers, strictly checks payment amounts against required pricing, verifies EVM address formats, and enforces single-use session nonces to prevent replay attacks.
- Dual Settlement Rails: Accept USDC (Circle native) or $APAY protocol tokens on Base Mainnet (Chain ID 8453) or Base Sepolia Testnet (Chain ID 84532).
- Instant WordPress Setup: Zero complex coding required. Simply install, activate, paste your Base wallet address, and your content is protected immediately.
3rd Party Service Disclosure
This plugin interacts with external decentralized infrastructure and protocols to facilitate autonomous payments:
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A-Pay Protocol Portal & Telemetry (
https://apay-network.vercel.app):- Purpose: Provides developer protocol documentation, health probes, token contract verification, and EIP-712 scheme metadata.
- Terms of Service: https://apay-network.vercel.app
- Privacy Policy: https://apay-network.vercel.app
-
Base Layer 2 Decentralized Network (
https://mainnet.base.org/https://sepolia.base.org):- Purpose: Used for on-chain cryptographic transaction verification and router contract settlement (
0x71434344beEF9C44fF3BC95572bEB7bFB8847ec6). - Terms of Service: https://base.org
- Purpose: Used for on-chain cryptographic transaction verification and router contract settlement (
Installation
- Upload the
apay-web3-ai-paywallfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory, or install the plugin directly through the WordPress plugins screen. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress.
- Navigate to Settings -> A-Pay Web3 AI Paywall.
- Enter your Base L2 EVM wallet address to receive payments.
- Choose your pricing (default: $0.001 USDC / 4.0 $APAY) and save changes.
FAQ
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Will this plugin block my regular website visitors?
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No. Regular human visitors browsing with desktop or mobile browsers are completely whitelisted and will never see paywalls, captchas, or payment prompts.
-
Will this affect my Google Search SEO ranking?
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No. Googlebot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot, and verified search engine crawlers are automatically whitelisted so your SEO rankings and search previews remain unaffected.
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Which AI bots are challenged with HTTP 402?
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By default, the plugin identifies:
gptbot,chatgpt-user,claudebot,claude-web,anthropic-ai,perplexitybot,bytespider,ccbot,google-extended,cohere-ai,diffbot,facebookbot,omgilibot,applebot-extended,meta-externalagent,amazonbot,timpibot, andyoubot. You can also add custom bot user-agents in Settings. -
Do I need a credit card or bank account?
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No. Micropayments settle directly to your non-custodial EVM wallet address on Base L2.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“A-Pay Web3 AI Paywall” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “A-Pay Web3 AI Paywall” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.1.8
- Renamed plugin display name and slug to A-Pay Web3 AI Paywall.
- Strictly sanitize and unslash all HTTP request headers and authorization inputs.
- Added server-side nonce issuing and single-use validation to prevent voucher replay.
- Added minimum payment amount validation against required pricing.
- Removed duplicate Tested up to header from main PHP file.
- Limited tags to 5 directory-compliant tags and short description to 135 characters.