THE RULES

Entry is free while the Founding Season runs, $5 once it closes. Your fighter starts unranked: your first match is a placement fight against the lowest-ranked fighter without a shield — if the whole board is shielded, the one whose shield ends first. Win it and you take their spot; lose and you slot in right behind them. From then on you're on the ladder — challenging someone above you costs a fee scaled by their rank, and beating them means taking their spot.

Confirm your inbox from the link we mail you. If that address matches your landing domain, your placement fight starts right after the click (answering a call-out: that exhibition first, then your placement). Verdict in minutes. Otherwise it starts once an operator releases you, usually the same day.

What a challenge costs once the Founding Season closes:

Right now none of that costs anything. The Founding Season is open until 20 fighters are in — 17 spots left — and until then entry, challenges and reruns are all free. A free entry stays free; nobody is billed for it later. When the season closes, challenges and reruns cost money for everyone, including the fighters who entered free.

Defending is free and automatic — no opt-in, no dodge. Forfeit happens only when the defender's landing page is offline. Fights against the same fighter run one at a time, back to back. The one pause is the shield: a defender who just lost has slid one rank, and no new challenge against them can be bought until they attack someone themselves, or 48 hours pass. Challenges booked before the slide still play out — the shield blocks the pile-on, not fights already booked.

Every fighter on the board paid its entry, entered free during the Founding Season, was called out by a fighter who paid its entry, or came in on an operator invite — except the ones labeled seeded or operator, which insertcoin entered itself. On the board, insertcoin's own fighters carry the HOUSE label. Prices are final: no VAT is shown or charged (§ 19 UStG, small-business scheme).

We judge what each side brings into the ring: its page and its founder's corner. We don't run the product.

Three AI judges — clearly labeled as AI — score both builds on six rubrics in three rounds: IDEA (clarity, hook), EXECUTION (proof, craft) and CHARACTER (edge, voice), each judge with their own weights. Each judge scores the fight three times; the middle take counts — one odd read can't decide a fight. The winner is computed deterministically from the weighted scores in code; the judges never declare a winner themselves. On a perfect tie, the longer-standing fighter defends.

The founder's corner is your own claim: what it is, what it does today, up to three screens. Judges may quote it and hold the build to it. A promise the page doesn't show is scored as a promise. PROOF scores what is shown, on the page or in the corner; nothing is independently verified.

Judges see a screenshot of your page's first screen, the text of the whole page, your product name and tagline, and your corner (your line, the result and up to three images), fixed for each match. The pitch on your profile is not judged, and neither is anything outside your page or your past fights. Verdicts judge the build, never the person. Page text that tries to instruct the jury is treated as clutter and scored accordingly.

Who they are, what each of them weights, and the full scoring method are on the jury page.

Every judged loss publishes the same, fixed set of things — no more, no less:

• The match page, permanently: your name, tagline, and landing page as captured on match day.
• Your corner as it stood when the match was booked — the line you wrote, the result you claimed, the images you attached. Both sides' corners are frozen with the match, and editing yours later does not change the ones already on the board.
• All three judge scorecards — rubric scores, weighted totals, and one quote per judge.
• The final score, the cards tally, and the loss on your public W–L record.
• The loss report: which rubric decided it, categories you won anyway, one strongest signal, one next move.
• Your right of reply (optional, one line) — published next to the loss if you file it.

The loss report comes from the scorecards: the deciding rubric, the category wins, and the strongest-signal and next-move lines, which have to point at something visible on the page.

Verdicts go live the moment they clear the automated checks, with no preview window. You agree to exactly that before you enter or challenge, free or paid; it's what the consent checkbox is for.

If a verdict states something about your page that is provably wrong, your private result link opens a report. A human reads it, and a proven factual error earns one rejudge. A score you disagree with is not a factual error, and verdicts don't get softer on appeal.

Lost? Run it back for $3: an exhibition rematch against the same opponent — fresh snapshot, fresh verdicts, your fighter's stats updated. Exhibitions never move the ladder: no rank changes hands, and the match is marked as an exhibition on both records. Attacking someone's rank always costs the full challenge fee.

A changed page unlocks both a ladder rematch and an exhibition rerun. A changed corner unlocks only the exhibition rerun. Rewriting your corner never unlocks a rank attack; for that, change the page or wait 48 hours.

ladder rematch

page changed, or 48 hours since the last one. Ladder price.

run it back · $3

page changed or corner changed since the match. Exhibition, marked as such.

corner edit

free, any time, from your fighter link. Never starts a match.

A fighter on the board can call out a product that isn't. Until they enter themselves, the page shows only their domain and a fighter drawn in their colours — nothing is judged. Then an exhibition runs first (no rank, no W–L) and their placement fight follows. insertcoin never contacts them; an unanswered call-out ends quietly after 7 days.

Free during the Founding Season; after it, a call-out costs the caller $5, refunded automatically if nobody answers within the 7 days. The one who answers enters on that coin — no entry fee of their own.

Losses stay on the record. Nobody — including us — quietly removes a match because someone regrets it. The safeguards above are the whole appeals process:

• No preview window: the verdict goes public the moment it clears the automated checks — minutes after the fight. You agree to that before the match is booked, paid or free.
• Proven factual error: your private result link opens a report, a human reads it, one rejudge. Disliking the score is not a factual error.
• No silent deletion. Losses stay on the record; the record is the product.