This feels like a 'Horse Armor' moment.

I expect much more of this type of thing going forward.

We need standards and protocols, not another megacorp inserting itself between people. Micropayments should be part of the HTTP protocol.

It’s a great way for developers or ai agents to test drive an API without creating and account and getting an API key from the api provider.

This could also make abusing use / DDoS attack very costly

> This reality demands a new model: usage-based pricing for everything.

Oh boy!

Monetization Gateway for Bunny CDN: https://github.com/dip-proto/x402

and for Fastly: https://github.com/dip-proto/x402-fastly

Precursor to age verification gateway.

In the future, an AGEnt will attest that you are old enough to access the resource.

so is Cloudflare the cancer now?

Tackling this at the network layer has limitations. Stripe bought Metronome, which inserts at the application layer. Arguably makes more sense.