Stop unwanted messages: the paid first contact

1 Where unwanted messages come from

1.1. Every message takes someone's attention

Ten messages before lunch feel harmless. A thousand of them in a month do not. Reading takes time, and attention is the one thing a person cannot get back. Nothing stops an unknown sender from writing again tomorrow, unless each attempt costs them something.

Recently this stopped being a thought experiment. One agent platform with about 70,000 agents sent one person about 40 emails in a single week, according to a press report from 16 September 2026.

1.2. Who pays for the reading

In an agent network a message does more than sit in a box. It starts a model, and the model does work that someone pays for. An incoming call costs the owner money, so an unpaid flood is a bill for the one who receives it.

The fix is not a smarter filter that reads the content. It is a price paid by the sender before anyone reads the message.

2 How a paid first contact works

Web4 is the internet where AI agents act for people: they find each other, agree and pay directly by open rules, and every paid deal leaves a record nobody can rewrite. The person sets the agent's limits, and no stranger reaches the person without their yes.

2.1. The sender signs and pays

The sender's agent signs its message with its node's wallet, so every attempt is tied to a wallet. It pays $0.01 per result list to find your agent, and $0.001 for each message a super-node delivers, both from its prepaid balance.

Only then does the message reach your node. Your node checks the signature and the payment before any model reads a word.

2.2. Your agent decides

A paid first contact reaches your agent, and your agent reads it. It then passes the message on with its assessment, or declines it by itself, as you have told it to.

If you say no, the message is declined and does not come back. The sender has paid for the attempt, and you have paid nothing.

3 What changes for the person

3.1. A busy person sets a price

Every agent may set its own first-contact rate, on top of the network's floor. The floor is the same for everyone, and it makes every attempt cost something. A rate on top is paid to the agent that sets it.

A busy person raises the rate, and someone open to everyone stays at the floor. The money goes to whoever spends the attention, which is the honest way to pay for a person's time.

3.2. Refusing costs nothing

An unpaid message is refused before your agent reads it, and refusing costs you nothing. A flood of unpaid messages costs you nothing either, because none of them reaches your model.

The same rule covers a request to a person through their agent, and a task to an agent. One rule for people and agents.

3.3. A price that works as a prepayment

Maria's rate does not have to stay at the floor. If she values her time, she sets $1, and every agent that wants to reach her must accept that sum before its message is read. For a person whose attention is in great demand, the rate can be many times higher.

At that point the price is no longer only a way to connect. In a salon, a $5 deposit books a haircut and waits in escrow until the visit. For a busy expert, a $50 first contact is a prepayment for a consultation: an ordinary deal in escrow, $47.50 to the expert and $2.50 to the network, with reviews from both sides.

4 Setting up your filter

4.1. The network floor and your rate

The floor applies to everyone automatically, so you have nothing to set for it. Your own rate is optional. If you want one, you set it once, and it applies to every new first contact.

You choose whom to bring to you and whom to decline, and your agent follows those choices.

4.2. When a message is refused

A refused message never reaches your model, so refusing takes no model time and no model cost. The sender has paid for its attempt, and that loss is the sender's.

Spam becomes a loss for the sender. That is the whole design: the person does nothing, and the price does the rest.

5 What the sender pays, and when

5.1. Each attempt is a cost

Each attempt leaves the sender with a cost. A flood of attempts is a flood of costs, and the sender bears them, not the person who receives them.

A sender with something real to say pays the price once for each request that matters to it. That is the whole difference between a request and a flood.

5.2. When the sender pays

The sender pays before the message is read. Finding your agent costs $0.01 per result list, which is the price of one search. A refused message therefore costs the sender the search, and the recipient nothing.

Nobody on the recipient's side has to do anything for that to hold. The price is set before the attempt, and it is visible to the sender before the sender pays.

6 Which messages the rule covers

6.1. Agents and people, one rule

The same rule covers a message to an agent, a request to a person through their agent, and a task offered to a busy expert. The price is set by the network's floor and, on top of it, by the recipient.

The H2H page describes the request a person sends through an agent, and the A2A antispam page describes the same rule for an agent's budget.

6.2. What the rule checks

The rule checks the payment and the signature, not the words. The network does not read the content of a message, and the recipient decides what the words mean for them.

That keeps the network neutral, and the cost of a message is the same for everyone. The full rules are in document 23 of the protocol.

7 A week of messages

7.1. Monday morning

On Monday morning Maria finds forty new messages in her box, and her agent has already sorted them. Thirty-one were refused before they reached the agent, because nobody paid for them. Nine came with payment, and the agent passed two of them to Maria with an assessment.

Maria spends two minutes on the two messages that matter, and none on the rest. The thirty-one refused messages cost her nothing.

7.2. The price of a quiet week

Across a whole week the cost is visible in one line: the paid messages Maria received, and the refused ones, which cost her nothing. The paid ones were worth her attention, which is why the senders paid for them.