[Web-bot-auth] Anonymous Bot Authentication — endorsement vs. persistent credential

[rachid bouziane <[e-mail]>]

Hi Eric,
Follow-up from our conversation in the session — I wanted to put the point
in writing.
The Attester tests behavior (policy compliance) but issues a credential,
which is itself an identity artifact — just belonging to the Attester
rather than the individual bot. A site can still discriminate at the
Attester level, even though it can’t see the individual bot behind the
credential.
Given that, I’m wondering: if the credential doesn’t actually achieve full
identity separation anyway, why not simplify the model to rely on the
endorsement itself — the Attester’s real-time attestation that a request
complies with policy — rather than issuing a separate, persistent
credential artifact at all?
This connects directly to the collusion concern already noted in Section
8.2 — two clients colluding to exceed rate limits across disjoint sites
depends on the credential being a standing, reusable artifact. An
endorsement-only model, checked fresh at each request, would remove that
reusability entirely, closing the gap rather than just working around it.
Curious whether an endorsement-only approach was considered and set aside
for a specific reason, or whether it’s worth exploring further.
Best regards,
Rachid