How we score operators, what counts as a verified incident, and what we explicitly refuse to do for affiliate money.

Editorial standard

Our methodology

How we decide what goes on the Fairness Ledger, how we score operators, and what we explicitly refuse to do for affiliate money.

The five audit criteria

Every operator we review is scored 0–5 against the same five tests. Pass = ✓, fail = ✗, mixed = ½. Public ranking is the sum.

  1. Server-seed commitment

    Does the operator publish a SHA-256 of the server seed BEFORE accepting bets? The hash must be visible client-side, not buried in a docs page.

  2. Seed reveal on rotation

    When the server seed rotates, the OLD seed must be revealed. We re-compute its hash and verify it matches what was published.

  3. Player-editable client seed

    The player must be able to set their own client seed. Operator-only RNG = no provably fair.

  4. Bias-free derivation

    The outcome formula must avoid modulo bias (use rejection sampling or a domain that divides cleanly). We test this with the modulo bias detector and a chi-square sample.

  5. Published algorithm

    The exact outcome-derivation algorithm must be documented. "Trust us" is not provably fair.

What counts as a "verified" incident

An incident moves from alleged to verified only on one of:

  • A court ruling or regulator order against the operator.
  • The operator's own public admission (post-mortem, statement).
  • Independent, reproducible technical evidence (e.g. published HMAC mismatch, hash chain break) — we re-derive it ourselves before publishing.

Reddit threads and Twitter screenshots are alleged-tier — useful as starting points, never enough on their own.

What we will not do

  • No paid placements. We don't take money to add, suppress, or remove Ledger entries.
  • No affiliate gating. We will not list an operator as "verified" because they pay us — only because they pass the five criteria above.
  • No anonymous removals. If an operator wants an entry retracted, we publish their argument and our response. The Wall is a record.
  • No copy-paste. Every entry is hand-checked against its sources. If we can't verify, we don't publish.

Affiliate disclosure

We do accept affiliate revenue, but ONLY from operators currently scoring 5/5 on the five criteria. If an operator's score drops, the affiliate link comes off the same day. Current list is on the operators page.

Submitting a tip

Send leads (with sources) to [email protected]. We publish credit unless you ask for anonymity. Corrections to existing entries go to [email protected].

Why an explicit methodology matters

Most “operator review” sites are affiliate marketing. The editorial position is downstream of the affiliate payout schedule: pay more, score higher. This produces leaderboards that are functionally reverse-correlated with player welfare — the operators most willing to skim from players have the biggest affiliate budgets.

Our methodology fixes that by being public and falsifiable. Every operator we list is scored against the same five technical criteria. If an operator fails a criterion, the score drops. We don’t take affiliate money from operators that fail any criterion — so there is no incentive to soften the audit.

What “verified” actually requires

Of the five criteria, the most-violated in the wild is criterion 2 (seed reveal on rotation). It’s also the cheapest for an operator to fake: publish a static hash, never rotate, claim “PF” on the landing page. Players almost never check, so the operator gets the marketing benefit without the engineering cost.

Our audit reverses this: we routinely sample published hashes from operators we cover, wait for rotation, attempt SHA-256 verification of the revealed seed, and publish the result. Operators that don’t rotate get flagged. Operators whose reveals don’t match the published hash get added to the Fairness Ledger.

What we will never do for affiliate revenue

  • Pay-to-list: there is no version of an operator listing that gets bought, only earned by passing the audit.
  • Remove negative coverage: a Ledger entry stays until the operator publicly admits and remediates the underlying issue, or hard evidence requires a retraction.
  • Hide audit dates: every operator review states when it was last audited. Stale audits expire and the operator drops to “unverified” until refreshed.
  • Override technical evidence: scoring is mechanical. Editorial discretion cannot bend a 3/5 into a 5/5 because a sales conversation went well.

How submissions are vetted

Tips arrive at [email protected]. Every submission is independently reproduced before publishing:

  1. The tip’s reproducer steps are followed against the live operator (or against a captured server response).
  2. The same evidence is independently sourced from at least one other channel (Reddit, Discord, court records, regulator action) where available.
  3. The operator is given right of reply: their response is published in full inside the entry, regardless of how aggressive.
  4. Entries are versioned. Old versions stay readable; we don’t silently rewrite history.

The standing invitation

Every operator we cover is welcome to dispute any entry. If they can show technical evidence that contradicts ours, we update the entry and credit them. We have never softened an entry in exchange for promotional consideration; we have repeatedly softened entries in exchange for hard evidence. The two are not the same.