Athenut: Privacy-preserving Web Search Powered by Kagi & Cashu
Athenut is a privacy-friendly pay-per-query web search engine powered by Kagi and Cashu.
- Users can now try out Kagi search without creating an account, in a pay-per-query environment powered by Cashu. Try it out at athenut.com.
"Athenut wraps around the Kagi API and lets you pay for searches with Bitcoin. Every individual search is paid for with ecash which means that you have no account and your payments can't be correlated to your searches," announced calle.
- In the background, Athenut features a fully integrated Cashu wallet that remains virtually invisible to the user. The only interaction needed from the user is to pay a Lightning invoice and check their remaining search balance.
"It's made for grug brains who want to be free. You pay, you search, that's it," said the developer.
- Athenut uses Error 402 to limit access to the search. Since ecash functions as a bearer instrument, the search request itself acts as the payment. Athenut encapsulates the locked ecash within the X-Cashu HTTP header, thereby merging search and payment into a single operation.
- Kagi also supports subscription payments with Bitcoin and Lightning via OpenNode, although users need to create an account to use it.
