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Two Blockchain Startups Aim to Kill the Captcha

Blockchain Startups

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.

Anyone who uses the web is aware at some level that bots are a problem – that’s why we have to spend so much time proving our humanity. Increasingly, accessing a site involves checking a box, or more annoyingly, picking out blurry images that include certain objects like traffic signals and bikes (though this has the added benefit of teaching self-driving cars not to run into things).

These captchas (short for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) are irksome from a user’s perspective, but the underlying problem is a severe headache for companies, who can never be sure how many impressions their ads are getting from humans, versus bots.

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 company has developed the product in partnership with another startup, Enigma, which focuses on keeping data private in blockchain-based smart contracts.