Paid placement
Rank is the bid.
Every paid spot on this ladder shows the amount that bought it. Placement starts at $3, and you hold your spot until someone spends more than you. You are never removed — you move down. Slots nobody has bought are held on momentum by the repos that gained the most ground since listing, and any bid takes one. The top 5 also appear at the top of the main leaderboard, marked with what they paid. Everything below that block is ranked by the published formula and cannot be bought.
The rules, in full
Placement is $3 to start. To pass a repo above you, spend more than its total. Payments accumulate on your own placement, so defending a rank costs only the difference.
The board never sits empty. Any of the top 5 slots nobody has bought is held by the repo that has gained the most stars since it was listed here. A held slot is not a placement: its holder paid nothing, the row says so, and $3 takes it. Every paid row outranks every held one, whatever the momentum behind it.
Placements never expire and are never refunded. If two repos reach the same total, the one that got there first ranks higher.
A paid placement changes where a repo sits and nothing else. It does not earn credits, does not affect review scoring, and cannot hide a bad review. See trust and moderation for what money cannot buy here.