proof-of-work

Who Does Anubis Stop?

3 months ago

Anubis is an HTTP proxy requiring proof-of-work (PoW) for resource access, designed to stop AI bots.
It fails against its target adversaries (e.g., AI scrapers) as they can trivially circumvent it using tools like anubis-fetch, which solves PoW natively or via browsers.
Anubis imposes a regressive burden on humans: it wastes time (e.g., ~2 seconds per solve at default difficulty) and energy, especially affecting those with weaker devices or non-JavaScript clients.
Globally, Anubis PoW challenges could waste significant human-time (e.g., ~230 person-years/year for 10M solves/day) and energy (~20 MWh/year), while failing to stop AI bots effectively.
The irony is that AI easily bypasses Anubis, but humans bear the cost, undermining the open web without addressing the intended threats.