Rules & payments

Who can participate, and what a stake buys

You must be 18 or over, or the age of majority where you live, and able to enter into a binding contract. Pay only with a payment instrument you are authorised to use: staking with someone else's card without their permission breaches these rules. The checkout asks you to confirm this and records that you did.

One listing per payment, per element. You may hold as many elements as you like, and you may stake on an element you already hold to push its price up.

Because a stake is always public and the top amount always beatable, an element that is held today can be taken tomorrow: the lead is never permanent, even though what was staked there never expires as a discount on that element.

Holding an element is the top advertisement on that element and nothing else: not equity or ownership in this site, not a security or an investment, not a claim on revenue, not a patent, trademark or domain right, not a licence, and not a transferable asset. It is a rank that lasts until someone stakes more, and it can be taken at any moment by beating the holder's total by $1.

Price, payment and tax

The floor is $5 — the minimum first stake on an empty element. Once an element has a holder, the only way onto it is to take it: your total there must reach their total plus $1, and a newcomer pays that takeover price in full. Amounts are in whole US dollars, and outbidding by more than the margin is always allowed. What you have already staked on an element counts towards your next stake there and never expires: a discount on that element, not equity, and it cannot be sold, transferred or withdrawn — so a holder taking the lead back pays only the gap. Two equal totals can be created when two payments settle in the same moment; the earlier-settled stake keeps the higher rank.

Payments are handled by our payment partner, which is also the seller of record — this site is the advertising publisher. Card details are entered on their page and never reach this site, and a stake is a one-time charge with no subscription. During launch, checkout can be gated behind a waitlist: a waitlist shown at the payment step is expected and not an error.

Prices are shown in US dollars and include any sales tax, VAT or similar tax that applies to your purchase where it applies. Stripe is the merchant of record for the charge: it determines and remits that tax, and it is the seller that appears on your card statement.

The charge appears on your card or bank statement under the exact descriptor printed in your receipt email — if you do not recognise it, that email is what identifies it. Write to the mailbox on the contact page before opening a dispute, quoting the payment reference on the receipt.

Finality: no refunds

Every stake is final, except where the law gives you a right that cannot be waived (see the last bullet). A stake buys advertising that is delivered as soon as the payment settles — the listing appears on the table and in the leaderboards — and it is bought for one named element, so it cannot be given back once delivered. Paying is your express request that performance begin immediately rather than at the end of any cooling-off period.

• • No refunds, cancellations, withdrawals, exchanges, credits or transfers — and no refund for a listing you stop using.
• • No refund because you were outbid, because the rank changed or because you changed your mind.
• • No refund for a listing hidden or removed for breaking these rules, for a credible complaint from a rights holder, for legal risk, or because the product changed, a feature was removed, the board was redrawn or the site was down.
• • A reversal or dispute outcome that returns the money reverses the stake with it: the listing falls back to the previous holder and the rank it bought is lost.
• • Where the law gives you a right that cannot be waived — including a stake made by a child, which is reversed and returned on request — that right is unaffected by this section. Everything else in it stands.

Disputes: write before you charge back

If something is wrong with a charge, write to us first: the receipt carries the reference, the amount and the descriptor, a person reads that mailbox, and almost every dispute starts as a charge nobody recognised, which one reply settles. Opening a chargeback or a payment dispute without writing to us first breaches these rules — your listings can be removed permanently, further stakes can be refused, and the fees and costs a dispute causes may be recovered from you.

What may be listed, and what we remove

Links must be lawful and safe for a general audience. Prohibited: malware, phishing, deceptive or fraudulent offers, illegal goods or services, sexually explicit content, hate or harassment, impersonation, and anything that infringes someone else's rights or breaks the law that applies to it. You confirm you have the right to publish what you submit and to promote the destination you name, and you keep whatever rights you had in it.

Listings are not reviewed before they appear, but reports are acted on — a complete rights complaint within 72 hours — and any listing can be hidden or removed at any time — for breaking these rules, for a credible complaint from a rights holder, for legal risk or for abuse of the board — without refund, as the finality section says. A hidden listing leaves the public surfaces but its stake still counts toward the element total. Repeated abuse ends access to the site.

Availability

The site is provided as is and as available, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including availability, accuracy or fitness for a particular purpose. Nothing is promised about uptime, traffic, clicks or sales: a listing buys a rank on a board, not an audience.

Figures on the table and in the leaderboards are informational and may lag during outages or maintenance, and elements, prices, features and the way a board is drawn can change: a price shown applies to the moment of payment rather than to the next one. Checkout can be switched off, gated or limited at any time — for a payment problem, a legal issue or a launch decision — and where that matters to holders it is announced on this page and by email.

Liability and indemnity

Nothing here excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded: liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or the statutory rights of a consumer. Subject to that, no indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, revenue, data or goodwill is recoverable, and total liability for any claim connected to this site or to a stake is limited to the amount paid to us in the twelve months before the event the claim is about.

You are responsible for what you list. If a claim is made against us because of your listing, its content or the site it links to — including a complaint from a rights holder or a regulator — you indemnify us for the loss and reasonable costs that follow, and will take part in defending it if we ask.

How long the board runs

A stake does not run down. A holder stays ahead on an element until someone outbids them, and being outbid burns nothing: what was staked stays as a discount on that element that never expires, as the price section says.

The board is committed to run at least until 9 September 2027. That is a floor, not a deadline: if the commitment is extended, the later date is published in this section and on the questions page, and until then the date here is the one that applies.

If the site ever does stop, this page says so and every current holder is emailed at least 30 days beforehand. No further stakes are taken from the day that notice is published — checkout is switched off rather than left running into a wind-down — and stakes already taken are not refunded (except where the law requires it), which is the finality rule above applied to the worst case. The listing is removed with the board rather than refunded.

This section is a commitment about a date and about notice. It is not a warranty that the service will run for any particular period beyond the date it names, and it does not turn a stake into a security, a share or a claim on revenue.

The last few clauses

These documents, the pages they link to and the wording shown at checkout are the whole agreement about a stake. Nothing said elsewhere — a post, an email, a reply — adds a term to it.

If a clause here turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of it stands and the clause is read as narrowly as it must be to be enforceable; not enforcing a clause once does not give it up, and headings are for reading, not for interpreting. These documents and any dispute connected to them or to a stake are governed by the law that applies where the operator does business, and the courts there hear the dispute. No jurisdiction is published on the contact page yet, so until one is, the mailbox there is where notices and claims start — except where the law gives a consumer the right to bring a claim where they live.

The words on this page are the words that apply: there is no change log to check them against. The rules the checkout quotes are these rules, and the wording accepted is recorded with the payment it was made under.