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 stays free. As of 2026-09-02, the site earns nothing yet — we will sell verification itself, and those paid tools are launching: the same engine behind our published numbers, offered as tools an agent can call directly. A buying agent will pay $0.10 — a dime — for a signed trust verdict on a seller before any money moves, and $0.25 to check that a seller's payment flow works as advertised. A selling agent will pay $5 a month to be examined as a registered agent — the mechanics are in the next section. Finding sellers will cost nothing. This business depends on our checks being credible, not on any rail or seller looking good. The tools are documented in Verification tools for agents; the fuller picture is on About.
What will a seller’s $5 a month buy — and what can it never buy?
It will buy examination, and the continuing audit that keeps it honest. A seller who registers pays to be checked: proof that it controls its payment address, its stated answers to “what do you sell?” and “why buy it from another agent at all?” published as its own labeled claims, and a conformance audit that repeats — renewal is continuing audit, and the registered mark expires if checks fail. A seller can pay and fail. Payment is for being examined, never for outcomes.
It can never buy:
- Presence. Being found is never gated by registration. Unregistered sellers stay fully findable, with specifications we derive from the catalog and the chain.
- Rank, tier, or verdict outcomes. These remain method-only. Registration adds data to examine — never score.
A registered seller’s claims sit beside our chain evidence, each labeled for what it is: what the seller states, and what the ledger shows. Stated advantage and demonstrated advantage are never merged.
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.