Blockchain Startups Aim to Kill the Captcha With a New Anti-Bot Protocol

Two blockchain startups have good news for those tired of teaching AIs to recognize stops signs, announcing a new ethereum-based solution Wednesday that is aimed to tackle the current plague of automated bot nets on the internet.

Serafin Lion Engel, CEO of the blockchain startup Datawallet, told CoinDesk that "37 percent of all the impressions that companies pay for on advertising networks are fraudulent impressions."

In order to solve this problem, Datawallet has announced a new product, the "Bot or Not protocol," to cut down on the prevalence of bots on ad networks.

The two companies announced a partnership in August, to be coordinated with the launch of an initial version of Enigma's "Secret contracts" protocol on ethereum, which was initially scheduled for the end of the third quarter but has since been pushed back.

Still, the two companies are proceeding with a test of the Bot or Not service.

Using ethereum - that is, according to the current plan - the protocol will allow entities to sell social media or music streaming data, for example, to a business such as an advertiser.

Enigma, which raised $45 million in an ICO last year, will contribute its privacy protocol to ensure that users don't escape annoying captchas only to find themselves exposing personal data.

Questions still remain to be answered regarding Bot or Not, including, Engel said, how to scale it.

"Ultimately we want to be chain-agnostic," he said, with Enigma also aiming to apply its privacy protocol to a range of smart contract networks outside of just ethereum.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.