The extension becomes a shield

PayHole for Chrome 0.2 checks every site you open against the resolver and puts a wall in front of drainers, phishing, and counterfeit token sites before they load. The x402 pocket is still there, off by default.

The extension shipped on day one as a spending pocket: a capped USDG wallet that pays sites over x402 while you browse. Few sites speak x402 yet, and a wallet you have to fund before it does anything is not something people install. So the extension now does first what the app does on the phone, and the pocket waits behind a switch.

What 0.2 does

• Every site is checked. As a page starts to load, the extension asks the public resolver about the name, the same verdict the app and the check page use. A listed name never loads. In its place: what it is, who says so, Go back, or Open once for ten minutes.
• The second time is instant. A name the browser saw blocked becomes a rule inside the browser, so the next visit is redirected before a single request leaves, extension awake or not.
• A badge on the tab. Red mark on a blocked site; the popup shows the verdict for any site, a Report button, and a box to check a link you were sent before you open it.
• Right-click any link. Check this link with PayHole opens the verdict without visiting.
• Reports from the browser. Four kinds, a note, done. They count as hints for now; the signed key that earns bounties comes to the extension next.
• The pocket, off by default. Turn it on in the Shield tab and the Budget, Sites, Agents, Registry, Tips, and Tiers tabs come back exactly as before. Tiers are now priced in USDG, like the tier page.

The only thing that leaves the browser is a hostname, once, the first time in a while, to a resolver you can change to your own Sinkhole node. No page content, no path, no identifier. The public resolver keeps no query log.

What comes next for it

The wallet guard: a warning before a signature to a known drainer address, an approval to a flagged spender, or an unlimited approval to a contract nobody has seen. That is the first thing PayHole will do that is not about names. Then the Chrome Web Store listing gets resubmitted as what the extension now is.

Install

payhole.org/downloads/payhole-extension.zip, and the steps on the extension page. Updating from 0.1 means extracting over the same folder and pressing the refresh arrow on the PayHole card in chrome://extensions. Settings stay.