Affiliate & monetization disclosure

Grail Atlas is independent and self-funded. This page lays out every channel by which the project may eventually make money, and the architectural guarantees that keep monetization separate from the merit ranking.

What we DO not do

• Take payment from sellers to rank them higher. Ever. The merit ranking is a deterministic function of the published engine — landed cost vs band, trust composite, risk read. No commercial relationship enters that calculation.
• Promote inventory. If we ever showcase specific inventory in editorial copy, it will be marked unambiguously as "sponsored" or "promoted" — and the trust / risk / value scores for that inventory will be unaffected.
• Hide negative signals about sponsoring sellers. The risk read on a sponsor's listing is the same risk read we'd publish without the relationship.

Channels we may use

• Affiliate links on outbound "buy on platform" links (e.g. eBay Partner Network). When active, the link will be tagged with a small disclosure icon and the disclosure text will appear on the listing card.
• Membership tier for advanced features (full owner-network access, deeper backtest data, custom alerts). Free tier remains comprehensive and includes every score and every reference page.
• Display advertising, only after the site reaches a meaningful monthly-visitor floor and only on pages where ads don't corrupt the trust narrative. Ads will be clearly labeled and never made to look like ranked content.
• Verified-listing fees for sellers who want the deeper authenticity-checked badge. Verification raises trust scores; the badge itself is the visible record. We publish the verification methodology and never assert authenticity we can't document.

The architectural guarantee

The trust composite formula in the engine takes no monetization-related input. The valuation factor tables take no monetization-related input. The risk read takes no monetization- related input. These are facts about the code; you can verify them yourself in the open-source engine modules referenced from the How it works page.

If Grail Atlas ever changes that — if any monetization channel is ever wired into a published score — this disclosure page will say so, explicitly, in language a hostile reviewer would write.

How to surface concerns

Bias in the rankings, undisclosed conflicts of interest, suspicious editorial content: report via the channels in the Acceptable Use Policy. We respond to every report; serious ones become public via the changelog.