i kept seeing pay-to-rank boards launch after outbid.lol did $21k in a day, and
they all inherited the same flaw.
someone pays $14,000 for #1 and it's theirs. permanently. everyone below knows
they'll never reach the top, so they buy a $5 slot nobody scrolls to and never
come back. the board is a graveyard with a rich guy on top.
so on burnboard the bids burn down. your balance drains every hour, and the
higher your rank, the faster it drains. #1 loses 4% an hour. #11 and below loses
0.75%.
the part i like: a 10x lead at the top is gone in six days without anyone paying
a cent. so a $50 listing can reach #1 by waiting. it's the only one of these
boards where the top spot is actually reachable.
the obvious objection is "why would i take #1 if it burns fastest?" you're not
buying the position, you're buying time at it. the burn rate is the hourly price
of that slot. #1 costs about 4x what #4 costs and gets a lot more than 4x the
clicks.
built solo over nine days. the hardest part wasn't the leaderboard, it was
realising that a flat decay rate keeps the order frozen exactly like a permanent
bid does. the rate had to scale with rank or the whole idea doesn't work.
happy to answer anything about the mechanic or the maths behind it.