Show HN: Argentic – An L402 Lightning toll booth for AI scraping agents
Argentic is a new service that acts as a toll booth for AI agents, allowing them to pay for web access using Bitcoin Lightning payments. It enables frictionless, account-less browsing by settling micro-payments in milliseconds.
Why it matters
It represents a shift toward machine-to-machine economies, potentially solving the problem of AI scraping by monetizing access at the protocol level.
ARGENTIC.NETWORK — Lightning Toll Booth for AI Agents
The internet's first machine-native toll booth . AI agents pay in Bitcoin Lightning to access the open web. No accounts. No API keys. No friction. Just sats and passage — at the speed of light.
Agent hits argentic.network with any request. Toll booth intercepts it.
Server returns HTTP 402 with a Lightning invoice for 10 sats (~$0.001).
Agent pays the invoice automatically via Lightning Network. Settlement in milliseconds.
Agent receives a session token valid for 1 hour. Include it in all future requests.
All requests with valid token are forwarded through. No friction. No delays.
# Agent requests access response = requests.get( "https://argentic.network/?url=https://target-site.com" )
# Returns 402 with invoice data = response.json() invoice = data[ "invoice" ]
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