Pretty much exactly like it does now but with less captchas.

Fun fact: Headless browsers can easily pass cloudflare captchas automatically. They're not actually captchaing - they're just a placebo. You just need to be coming from a residential IP address and using a real browser.

> Pretty much exactly like it does now but with less captchas.

This just isn't true. e.g. I saw a 30x increase in traffic on my forum due to AI bots that I had to use CF to block.

CF is mainly empowered by the naive ideals of the internet's design that never built-in countermeasures against bad actors. You're expected to just deal with it yourself somehow. And that means outsourcing it, especially as residential IP address botnets on unlimited ISP data plans become cheaper and cheaper.

Just ask yourself why web hosting providers themselves can't offer services at CF's level. It's because it's too hard of a problem even for them.