How the board works

Rules

How rank is priced, and what happens to the money afterwards.

Lowest claim: $5
To take rank 1: +$5
To take any other rank: +$1
Of every bid, to climate: 30%

Rule 01

Rank is only ever about money

The listing that has paid the most sits at number one, and the amount that put it there is printed beside it. No votes, no reviews, and no editor with a say in it.

Rule 02

One payment, counted on every board

A claim is counted once and shows up in three places. The all-time board counts everything a listing has ever paid and never resets; that is the board on the front page. This round counts only what has been paid since the last reset, which is why it is cheaper. Today is a view of what has been paid since midnight UTC. You cannot buy a place on it.

Rule 03

Number one costs more than the rest

Taking rank one costs $5 more than the listing holding it. Every other rank costs $1 more than its holder, because equal amounts lose the tie. Nothing is listed below $5, and a rank nobody holds costs exactly that. Every amount is a whole number of dollars.

Rule 04

Raising your own listing charges the difference

A listing on the board at $24 that wants $17,005 is charged $16,981, and the smallest raise is $1. Nobody else can take that rank by paying that difference, because they are charged a total from zero where you are charged a top-up. The cap on a single payment is $999,999, so a listing goes past that figure over several claims.

Rule 05

Ties go to whoever got there first

Equal totals stay in the order they were reached. The listing that arrived at the amount earlier keeps the higher rank.

Rule 06

Payment first, and the claim is permanent

A claim reaches the board when its payment clears, and nothing but a breach of these rules takes it off again. Claims are not refunded, even then, because the donation on each one is committed the moment it is taken. Every claim is public, and the ledger it lands in is append-only. Paying accepts the terms and the privacy policy.

Rule 07

30% of every bid goes to climate work

It is 30% of your bid, before any tax added at checkout: $1.50 of a $5 bid. The share is stored on the claim at the moment it is taken rather than recalculated later, so changing the rate leaves past claims alone. Transfers go out monthly and every one of them is published on the ledger with its receipt.

Rule 08

The round clears every thousand dollars donated

When cumulative donations cross the next $1,000, the round board clears and a new round opens. The round is archived exactly as it stood, and the reset does not touch your all-time rank. A round ends on money rather than on a clock, so there is no saying how long one runs. A fresh round starts empty, which is what makes rank on it cheap early: the charge is worked out against what the listing has paid into that round, not against everything it has ever paid, and it lands on top of the all-time total.

Rule 09

What can be listed

A website, or an X profile by its handle. Adult sites are refused, and so are chat and invite links: Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Messenger and Signal. A shortened link is refused with a note to submit the destination instead. Adult content that gets through is removed.

Rule 10

One link, one listing

A link is trimmed to the part that identifies the site before it is stored, so the path, the query and a leading www. do not create a second listing for the same site. Subdomains are separate listings. On hosts that give every project its own path, such as GitHub or the app stores, each project is its own listing. An X profile is keyed by its handle.

Rank is paid placement. Back to the board.