How the Arena works, no filler.

This is the whole mechanism. Nothing here is a simplification for marketing — the actual ranking math lives in one file in the codebase and every rule below maps to something it enforces.

1. 01

   Getting in is free. Anyone can list a product at no cost. Confirm your email, pass a quick moderation check, and you are live on the board and in the feed.

2. 02

   The crowd votes you up or down. Every listing can be voted on, from the board or from the feed — it is one product with two windows onto it, so a vote cast anywhere moves you everywhere.

3. 03

   Votes are confidence-weighted, not just counted. A Certified (signed-in) vote counts more than a guest vote, and suspicious voting patterns get discounted automatically — a raw vote count is never what moves you.

4. 04

   −5 sentiment steps evicts you. If the crowd turns hard enough against a card, it is pulled from the feed outright. Nothing you pay for buys immunity from this.

5. 05

   Rank is votes plus freshness. Money is not an input. A newer listing starts level with an older one that has about ten times its votes (two days newer is worth one order of magnitude), so new launches get a fair shot and an old card has to keep earning its place. Nothing you pay for — Verified, Growth — appears anywhere in the formula.

6. 06

   The threshold to move adapts to traffic. How many votes it takes to shift a rank stretches with how many people are actually watching right now, so a small raid can’t swing the board during a quiet hour and get "locked in" once traffic returns.

7. 07

   Founders do not vote. If you have a listing, you cannot vote — not on a rival, and not on your own. Founders have a direct stake in every other ranking, and the crowd signal is worthless if the people being ranked are the ones casting it.

8. 08

   One IP, one ASN, real limits. Votes are rate-limited per IP address and per network (ASN), on top of the confidence weighting above. Spinning up more connections does not multiply your voting power.

9. 09

   Every card is moderated before it’s public. Automated screening plus a review gate runs on every upload before a card ever reaches the feed. Until it clears, it does not exist to anyone but you.

10. 10

    Zero tolerance for illegal or abusive content. No adult content, no illegal goods or services, no hate speech, no harassment, no scams. Cards that violate this are pulled, and any Verified time on them is not refunded — see the Terms.

11. 11

    Comments require a Certified account, and never a link. Anonymous comments and comments containing URLs are rejected outright. This is enforced server-side, not just by a UI hint.

12. 12

    The click count you see is a verified count. Raw clicks are filtered for obvious bot and non-human traffic before they’re shown. It will always read lower than raw hits — that’s the point.

13. 13

    Verified is a monthly trust badge, not a boost. Verified shows a mark on your card, listing page and embed badge for 30 days per payment; renewing early stacks. It never changes your rank or your vote weight.

14. 14

    Every payment is public. Verified purchases — and the bids and refuels from before listing became free — are listed on each card’s page with amount and timestamp. Nothing about a card happens off the record.

15. 15

    One email, a few listings a day. Free listing is rate-limited per email and per network, and an unconfirmed listing is deleted after 48 hours.

16. 16

    Outbound links are nofollow. Every link from Kingpin to a listed product carries rel="nofollow". A listing sends you visitors, not search-engine link weight.

Breaking rules 10 or 11 gets a card pulled and, for repeat cases, the account or fingerprint blocked. See the Terms for the full legal version of all of this.