3 chapters across the catalog
The conversation shifts to the X402 protocol backed by Cloudflare, which aims to facilitate micro-payments for AI agents using stablecoins. The hosts reflect on the philosophical disconnect between the Bitcoin ecosystem and the practical needs of average podcasters for low-fee, self-sovereign payments.
Jones details his struggle with "415 Unsupported Media Type" errors affecting the Podcast Index aggregator. After testing various user agents and IP addresses from Linode, he suspects Cloudflare is flagging the aggregator as a malicious bot, leading him to apply for their verified bots program.
To resolve blocking issues, Dave Jones implemented HTTP signing using Cloudflare's "web-bot-auth" protocol. He repurposed existing Rust code from the ActivityPub bridge to publish public keys on podcastindex.org, though he notes that Cloudflare has yet to officially verify the bot despite the implementation.
