# Ladder — full context

## What Ladder is

Ladder is a public leaderboard for real websites and projects. It is intentionally simple: the bid determines the rank, and the publish time breaks ties. The board is open to eligible public destinations rather than a curated club.

## How ranking works

- New bids use whole USD amounts.
- The minimum bid is $5 and the maximum bid is $999,999.
- Higher bids rank above lower bids.
- When bids are equal, the earlier published bid ranks first.
- To overtake an active listing, a new bid must be at least $1 higher than its current bid.
- The displayed preview is not a guarantee until Stripe confirms payment.
- A listing is published only after the server verifies the completed payment.
- A refunded, disputed, or reversed payment removes the associated listing from the public board.

## What can be listed

Eligible destinations include websites, products, projects, portfolios, newsletters, communities, and other public pages that people can visit and understand. The submitted domain must resolve to a real public destination, and one destination can have only one active listing.

## What cannot be listed

Ladder does not promote pornography, sexual services, gambling, casinos, sportsbooks, betting, poker rooms, lotteries, hate, racism, harassment, threats, malware, phishing, scams, impersonation, doxxing, illegal activity, deceptive destinations, link farms, scraped pages, disposable redirects, or affiliate-only pages. Automated screening is a first pass; flagged or borderline submissions may be held for review.

## Privacy and payments

No Ladder account is required to submit a bid. Stripe collects the billing details required to process a one-time payment. Billing details and payment identifiers are not public listing content. Public click totals may be shown for listings, but private visitor details are not exposed.

## Data and ownership

The board is powered by live InsForge data when connected. Revenue shown on the public board is derived from completed Stripe payments, with successful refunds removed from the total. Ladder is built and operated by 8StarLabs.

## Canonical pages

- Homepage: https://ladder.8starlabs.com/
- Rules: https://ladder.8starlabs.com/rules
- Sitemap: https://ladder.8starlabs.com/sitemap.xml
- Robots: https://ladder.8starlabs.com/robots.txt