Why Cloudflare Needs More Blockchain Throughput Than All of Crypto Combined

Non-human traffic now dominates the majority of all web traffic for the first time ever, according to Cloudflare’s analysis, and the shift is breaking the ad-based business model that funds most of the internet.

Will Papper, Cloudflare’s Director of Product, who helped build ConstitutionDAO, joined Laura Shin to unpack how x402, a decades-old HTTP status code revived for stablecoin payments, could make the difference.

The conversation covers Cloudflare’s newly announced Monetization Gateway and Wallets products, why the company needs a blockchain that scales horizontally instead of running on one giant server, and the early use cases drawing interest: LLM inference, data licensing, and indie API builders. 

Plus, will DAOs make a comeback?

Show Highlights:

• • How Papper went from putting $10 in the Ethereum presale to working on micropayments at Cloudflare
  • How Coinbase revived ×402, a dormant 1990s HTTP status code (402 Payment Required)
  • Two new Cloudflare products, Monetization Gateway (for sellers) and Wallets (for buyers), aim to make adding stablecoin micropayments to a website as easy as flipping a switch
  • Why Cloudflare’s scale requires a blockchain with throughput greater than all existing chains combined
  • Why Papper doesn’t think physical goods are the best use case for agentic payments, explaining why the retail stablecoin-payments hype from a few years ago never took off
  • Papper explains the two main problems DAO face and how AI agents could play a role in the DAO revival

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