About · Neutrality policy
Who pays us — and does that shape what we write?
Nobody we cover pays us anything, and nothing for sale here is coverage. This page is the policy in writing, so you can link to it and hold us to it.
The policy, in one breath
No paid placement. No sponsored listings. No affiliate links. No advertising. No partnership, grant, or relationship that buys coverage, position, or silence — from any protocol backer, payment company, or seller this site covers. Ever.
How do we earn instead?
Plainly disclosed: the hub you are reading is free, and as of 2026-09-01 the site earns nothing. The plan is paid verification services — the same engine behind our numbers will later sell per-call trust checks to agent operators. That business depends on our checks being credible, not on any rail or seller looking good. The fuller picture is on About.
How is neutrality enforced, structurally?
Promises drift, so the neutrality here is built into the site’s structure — into things you can check on any page:
- One template for every rail. Each payment rail page uses the same sections, in the same order, at the same depth. No rail gets a longer, warmer page than its peers.
- One fixed order, every surface. Wherever rails are listed, they appear in one alphabetical order: AP2 & UCP · Stripe machine payments · Verifiable Intent & Agent Pay · x402. Nobody is first because we favor them.
- Described, never ranked. Rails are explained in their own terms. No winner is declared, anywhere on this site — the honest answer to “which rail wins?” is that nobody knows.
- Data gaps stated, not padded. Some rails leave public data; others don’t yet. Where data is missing, the page says “not yet published by” the backer — a gap is stated as a fact, never dressed up or held against anyone.
- Numbers traceable or absent. Every published number must be recomputable from public data, per the methodology. A favored-looking number with no receipt cannot exist here, because no number without a receipt can.
- A banned-language list. Site copy is checked against a standing list that bans hype, urgency, and money-framing language — the vocabulary paid coverage is usually written in.
What do we refuse to publish?
- Paid placement of any kind, under any label — “sponsored,” “featured,” “partner,” or undisclosed.
- Winner declarations or predictions about which rail or protocol will prevail.
- Market-size figures, revenue claims, or adoption numbers we cannot recompute from public data — including self-reported ones. The full refusal list is in the methodology.
- Token-price talk of any kind.
- Links to checkout, affiliate, or token-sale pages. External links go to primary sources — specifications, official documentation, announcements.
- Fear. Real risks are described factually, with evidence — never to frighten readers toward our services.
What if one rail simply has more data?
Then its pages will honestly show more data — that is asymmetry in the world, not favoritism on the site. x402 settles on a public ledger, so it leaves records anyone can check; the card-side rails publish less today. We handle this by keeping the template identical, declaring each gap on the page it belongs to, and never padding a thin section to fake balance. Stated asymmetry is neutrality; hidden asymmetry is marketing.
What happens if this policy ever changes?
It is announced visibly — on this page, in this page’s changelog, before the change takes effect. Never quietly. If you ever see conduct on this site that contradicts this page, report it like any other error: corrections@agenteconomy.cloud.