Anubis ships WebAssembly after year
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Anubis v1.27.0 ships WebAssembly-based proof of work checks after a year of work.
The update aims to block bots on websites without annoying human users.
Background
Anubis is an open-source tool that uses proof-of-work challenges to block bots from accessing websites, often depicted as an anime girl. The developer spent a year implementing WebAssembly support, involving hundreds of commits, multiple pull request generations, and rewriting parts in Rust. This release replaces the previous JavaScript-based challenges with WebAssembly, aiming to improve performance and user experience.
How it unfolded
- Sep 6, 2026Anubis v1.27.0 released, introducing WebAssembly-based proof of work checks.
- Sep 6, 2026Developer blog post details the year-long development process, including rewriting parts in Rust and overcoming a compiler bug.
- Sep 7, 2026Discussion spreads on Hacker News, Reddit, and social media, with some users praising the UX compared to Cloudflare.
Who’s saying what
- Support
- Some users appreciate Anubis because it doesn't require interaction like Cloudflare's challenges, improving user experience.
- Caution
- A Hacker News commenter notes that proof-of-work systems waste computational cycles, unlike crypto where tokens have value.
Still unverified
A social media comment claims Anubis is 'completely useless blocking bots', but this is anecdotal and not confirmed.