The future of swarm and agent protection

The most advanced bot defense system

One person. One budget.

Quota is human-bound rate limiting. Every real person gets a small, private allowance of actions on each website. Their agents spend it. A swarm can’t mint more.

Run the swarm demo → How it works

white · what the site learnsblue · what nobody learns

Detection asks the wrong question

AI agents now pass CAPTCHAs and behave like people. Many are welcome: someone asking an AI to book their GP appointment isn’t an attacker. The harm is volume: one person doing the work of ten thousand.

Bot detection

Is this request from a human?

An arms race against ever-better models
Blocks helpful agents along with harmful ones
Relies on fingerprints and tracking
Built for big sites with security teams

Quota

How many humans stand behind this traffic?

Doesn’t matter how human-like agents get
Good agents work, spending their owner’s allowance
The site learns only “valid and within limit”
One script tag for a council or a two-person shop

One person, followed through the protocol

Human-bound rate limiting, step by step: one allowance, from enrolment to a swarm hitting the limit. White is what gets recorded. Blue is what stays with you.

Enrol once

Prove you’re a person

Tap “Verify you’re human” and confirm with Face ID or your PIN. Your phone’s secure chip vouches for you. Connect a bank or ID wallet later for a bigger allowance.

Recorded: The attester sees a real person
Private: Every website you’ll ever visit

Issue blind

Get a credential nobody can recognise

The attester passes on your tier and nothing else. Quota signs your credential blind, so it can’t spot it later. It lives only on your device: no account, no email, no password.

Recorded: Tier: silver
Private: Your identity, and the credential itself

Spend per action

Send a one-time tag

Booking an appointment spends one slot. Your wallet sends a tag plus a proof that it’s valid. Tags differ per site and per day, so nobody can link them together.

tag = H(secret, site, day, i) prove i < limit(tier)

Recorded: A fresh tag, a valid proof, tier silver
Private: Who you are, and every other tag

Delegate optional

Lend slots to your agents

Give an agent a slice of your allowance with a scope and an expiry. It can book for you, but every action still comes out of the same budget. A thousand agents share one.

Recorded: More valid tags, until the budget runs out
Private: Whether you or your agent clicked

Swarm the limit

A swarm finds nothing to spend

Spin up ten thousand more agents and they all draw on the same three slots. Reused tags bounce. Requests with no proof bounce. The swarm is one person again.

Recorded: Rejections: spent tags, missing proofs
Private: Who was behind the swarm

01 · enrol

What the website has seen

Nothing yet. Enrolment never touches the website.

TERM · noun

Human-bound rate limiting

A rate limit keyed to a verified person, rather than to an IP address, an account or a device. Each person gets a fixed allowance of actions per site per day, spent with unlinkable one-time tags, so any number of agents still add up to one budget.

Per IPPer accountPer devicePer person

Allowance: How many actions one person gets on one site per day, e.g. 3. The site sets it.
Slot: One unit of allowance, spent per action.
Tag: The one-time marker sent with each action. Cryptographers call it a nullifier.
Epoch: The window after which allowances reset and tags can’t be linked. 24 hours.
Delegation: Lending some of your slots to an agent, with a scope and an expiry.

III

A yes, not a name

Each request carries just enough to be counted and nothing that could be followed.

POST /book · northfield-surgery Site’s viewYour view Accepted 1 slot spent Tiersilver Tag7f3a…c21 · unused today Proofvalid WhoAma Okafor Sent byher booking agent Also used todaylibrary, council tax

The site gets a yes, not a name. Identity, agents and browsing stay with the person.

northfield.gov.uk · 23 Sep7f3a…c21

library.example · 23 Sepb09e…4d8

northfield.gov.uk · 24 Sepe51c…90a

Tags never repeat. Same person, different site or day: a new tag. Nobody can join them up.

Many agents, one allowance. Delegated slots come out of the owner’s budget.

Nothing to leak. No account, no email, no password. The credential never leaves your device.

Surge pricing, with a ceiling. Under load an action costs more slots, but never more than one person holds.

Nobody is locked out. No credential? Solve a small proof of work instead. Slower, never impossible.

A booking form versus a swarm

A GP surgery releases 48 appointments. 40 local people want one each. One operator points an agent swarm at the form. Compare it with Quota protection on and off.

Agents in the swarm 5,000

All run by one person.

Quota protectionEvery action must spend a slot Surge pricingActions cost more under load

Allowance per person 3 slots

Per site, per day. The site sets this.

northfield-surgery.nhs.example / book ready

0people booked (of 40)

0taken by the swarm

0requests rejected

1slots per booking

APPOINTMENTS personswarmfree

48 appointments. 40 people. One swarm.

Small by design

The whole thing fits in four numbers.

1line of HTML

to protect a form. Quota runs the verifier and the spent-tag store.

0identifiers

reach the website. No name, email, cookie or fingerprint.

24hours

before tags reset. Yesterday’s tags can’t be linked to today’s.

3slots, by default

per person, per site, per day. Each site sets its own.

The pieces exist. Nobody has put them together.

Human-bound rate limiting joins existing research into one system. Quota treats other proofs of personhood as inputs, not rivals.

Approach	Proves	Agent aware	Private	Small-site setup
Quota	A human-bound rate limit: one person’s budget	Delegated slots	Unlinkable tags	One script tag
World ID AgentKit	A unique human, via iris scan	Yes	Yes	Needs Orb enrolment
Signed agents / Web Bot Auth	Which company runs the agent	Partly	n/a	CDN-dependent
Private Access Tokens	A genuine device	No	Yes	Apple devices only
CAPTCHA / bot scores	Behaves like a human	Blocks them	Fingerprinting	Easy, but failing

Built on k-times anonymous authentication · Rate-Limiting Nullifiers · rate-limited Privacy Pass tokens. Quota adds proof of personhood and agent delegation.

VII

Protect a form in one line

Quota runs verification and the spent-tag store for you. No keys to manage, no cryptography to write.

<!-- 1. Add the script -->
<script src="https://cdn.quota.dev/v1.js"
        data-site="pk_live_northfield" defer></script>

<!-- 2. Mark the forms that cost a slot -->
<form action="/book" data-quota="booking">
  ...
</form>

import { Quota } from "@quota/agent";

// A delegation the owner approved in their wallet
const q = await Quota.fromDelegation(process.env.QUOTA_GRANT);

const res = await q.fetch("https://northfield-surgery.example/book", {
  method: "POST",
  body: form,
});
// Spends one slot from the owner's allowance, or throws BudgetSpent

# quota.yaml: set in the dashboard or as code
actions:
  booking:
    min_tier: bronze
    allowance: { bronze: 2, silver: 3, gold: 5 }
    epoch: 24h
    surge:
      above_rps: 50
      max_price: 3
    fallback: proof_of_work   # nobody is locked out

Ten thousand agents.
One budget.

Human-bound rate limiting counts people, not requests. Try the swarm, read how it works, or get on the list.

Join waitlist → Run the demo

The most advanced bot defense system

Detection asks the wrong question

One person, followed through the protocol

Prove you’re a person

Get a credential nobody can recognise

Send a one-time tag

Lend slots to your agents

A swarm finds nothing to spend

Human-bound rate limiting

A yes, not a name

A booking form versus a swarm

Small by design

The pieces exist. Nobody has put them together.

Protect a form in one line

Join the early access list

Ten thousand agents.One budget.

Ten thousand agents.
One budget.