Verify a track record
The four-step screen, in its quick form. Run it on any service that publishes a record and you will know within minutes whether its claims can be checked at all.
This is the compact version of the full verification lesson, written to be run as a screen rather than read as a tutorial. The order is deliberate: each step is cheaper than the one after it, so you stop as soon as a service fails.
- Is there a denominator? A win rate must come with the total number of calls and the losers included. No count, no trust — the percentage is just a banner.
- Is the period continuous? Look for an unbroken stretch with a stated start and end, not a hand-picked run of good weeks.
- Is there a drawdown figure? A record that shows return but hides its worst peak-to-trough fall is showing you only the half that flatters it.
- Is there a named, independent reviewer? Of the underlying record — a leaderboard is not an audit and a testimonial is not a review.
- Can you confirm one call against a public timestamp? The decisive test: match a single past call to its on-chain receipt. If the receipt predates the outcome, the call was fixed in advance.
How to score it
Treat the last item as a gate, not a point. A service that cannot pass the timestamp check has failed the screen no matter how well it does on the others, because everything else rests on trusting a record you cannot confirm. The first four narrow the field quickly and cheaply; the fifth is the one that cannot be faked. A service that clears all five — like the worked example used throughout this primer — has handed you a history you can actually check field by field, not merely one to be impressed by.
If you want to see what failure looks like in practice rather than in the abstract, the companion page on spotting fake results walks through the specific patterns a record shows when it cannot survive this screen.
The takeaway: five questions, run cheapest first, with the timestamp check as the gate. Anything that fails the gate is unverifiable, whatever its banner claims.