Transparency

How trending works

This describes the actual formula running in production today, including how Boost affects it. We'd rather you know the real mechanics than read a nicer-sounding version that doesn't match what's shipped.

The Trending score

Every live Listpad token gets a score recalculated on each read, combining six signals so no single one can be gamed on its own:

24h trading volume

Log-scaled, so a token doesn't need 10x the volume to rank meaningfully higher.

Community votes

Only votes cast today count, from email-verified accounts, capped per user and per IP to raise the cost of gaming this.

Price momentum

24h price change, favoring pumps, clamped so an extreme single move can't dominate the whole score.

Listing recency

A small, decaying boost for freshly listed tokens, fully gone by about a week.

Real buy pressure

The ratio of buys to sells, only counted once a token has enough transactions (5+) that the ratio means something.

Active Boost

See below, this is the one paid input, and it's real, not hypothetical.

On paid promotion, honestly

Listpad sells Boost, and an active Boost does add directly to a token's Trending score alongside the organic signals above. It is not hidden, and it is not the only input, but it is a real one, we're not going to claim otherwise.

Two things keep it from being pay-to-win: a Boost only ever adds to a token's score, it never replaces or overrides the organic signals, and a token with no real trading activity at all can't ride a boost to the top - the lift is capped for inactive tokens. Boosted tokens are also shown in their own labeled section, separate from the organic Trending/Hot/New tabs, so paid and organic are never presented as the same thing.

Trending vs. Hot vs. New

Three different cuts of the same live token catalog, not three separate scores competing for your trust: Trending is the blended score above (organic signals plus any active Boost lift). Hot is ranked purely by active Boost - it's the most direct "who's currently paying for attention" view, shown honestly as that rather than disguised as organic momentum. New is simply the most recently listed tokens, no scoring involved.

This formula changes over time as we find better ways to resist manipulation. This page is updated whenever it does - if what you see here stops matching what the product actually does, that's a bug, tell us.