As you noticed, I had to temporarily enable DDoS protection. Someone is trying quite effectively to distract me from my activities ;p Unfortunately, this may cause some issues with the federation. I will try to cut off the traffic as soon as possible and return to normal operation. Thank you for all your support and patience! :)
Yeah I started getting those captchas after the DDoS protection got switched on, using a VPN on both. Have had the same thing on a few sites using a VPN, minor cost for the whole site not getting knocked out though.