AMA: I replaced reCAPTCHA with math β building GDPR-compliant forms without cookies or puzzles
Hey Product Hunt π
I'm Noah, the maker of nForms. Before the launch, I wanted to open up the floor for real questions.
The problem I kept running into:
Every form I built for EU clients needed three things β spam protection, accessibility compliance, and GDPR compliance. reCAPTCHA handles one (badly). WCAG needs manual ARIA work. GDPR means more cookie banners.
So I rebuilt the whole stack around one idea:
β What if your browser solved a math problem instead of a traffic light puzzle?
That's Proof-of-Work. SHA-256. ~200ms. Invisible to the user.
Brutal for bots at scale.
I'm happy to answer anything about:
How PoW actually works in a WebWorker
Why reCAPTCHA creates GDPR exposure (and what the Austrian DSB ruling means for your forms)
How WCAG 2.2 AA form validation works without a library
What the EAA means for EU SaaS in 2025
How we built it on Cloudflare Workers + D1 β and what broke along the way
Ask me anything. No question too technical or too basic.
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