[akoboldfrying]

Which blockchain? An existing mainstream one like Bitcoin?

Because if so, I don't yet see how to "smooth out" the wins. If the crawler manages to solve the very-high-difficulty puzzle for you and get you 1BTC, great, but it will be a long time between wins.

If you're proposing a new (or non-mainstream) blockchain: What makes those coins valuable?

[recursivecaveat]

Isn't it the same problem as public mining pools? I remember I ran my little desktop in one for a day or 2 and got paid some micro-coins despite not personally winning a block. I'm not sure how they verify work and prevent cheating, but they appear to do so. I don't know if it scales down to a small enough size to be appropriate for 1 webpage though.

[akoboldfrying]

I think you're right, I'll look into this. Thanks!

[zeropointsh]

Look into JavaScript web miners for Monero. It exists but just hasn't been implemented into a proof-of-work concept to make a bot/AI scraper "pay" to access your site. Or if it has been used, not at scale.