One vote. One person. Real money.

Who can vote

• Anyone with a verified email address. No purchase required. No MeterCall account required beyond verification.
• Verification = we send a 6-digit code to your email; you enter it once. After that, you're good for the whole voting window.
• One verified account = one vote across ALL entries (not one vote per entry). You pick the single build you think should win.

When voting happens

• Submissions close May 11, 2026 · 23:59 ET.
• Voting opens May 12, 2026 · 00:00 ET and runs 48 hours through May 13, 2026 · 23:59 ET.
• You can change your vote once — only during day 2 (May 13 ET). This stops last-minute panic farming but lets you switch if something genuinely better surfaces.
• Integrity review: May 14. Winners announced same day.

What happens after the vote

1. Entries are ranked by vote count.
2. The top 1,000 proceed to integrity review — a 4-person organizer panel (Pat + 3 independent judges, named publicly 48 hours before announce) inspects each one for bot-vote patterns, stolen work, or spam.
3. DQ decisions require 3-of-4 consensus. Ties keep the entry in.
4. Surviving top 1,000 take the power-law tier table (binding rules). At the $100K cap: #1 gets $25K, #2 gets $15K, #3 gets $10K, #4–10 get $2,500 each, #11–50 get $300 each, #51–200 get $50 each, and #201–1,000 get $16.25 each — sums to $100K exactly. Paid in MeterCall meter credits over 3 years (36 monthly tranches).
5. A DQ'd entrant may appeal within 48 hours of the announcement.

Worked example — monthly cash flow at $100K cap

Winners are paid in 36 equal monthly tranches over 3 years. First payment on or before 2026-06-13. At the $100K cap the per-winner monthly breakdown is:

• #1 — $25,000 total → $694.44/month × 36
• #2 — $15,000 total → $416.67/month × 36
• #3 — $10,000 total → $277.78/month × 36
• #4–10 — $2,500 each → $69.44/month × 36
• #11–50 — $300 each → $8.33/month × 36
• #51–200 — $50 each → $1.39/month × 36
• #201–1,000 — $16.25 each → $0.45/month × 36

Total monthly outlay at cap: $2,777.78/month × 36 months = $100,000.

How to flag cheaters

Every entry has a Flag button. Flag an entry if you suspect bot votes, stolen work, spam, or AI-slop with no real utility. Your flag is anonymous to other voters.

When an entry hits 20 flags, it drops into the review queue automatically. Flagging an entry you just voted against is fine — flag manipulation is its own violation, though, and tracked.

What DOESN'T work (don't waste your time)

• Vote farms — we measure vote-time distribution. Human voting produces a smooth curve over hours; bots produce clusters. Clusters get flagged.
• VPN / datacenter rotation — we log ASN. Datacenter-origin votes get weighted out.
• Fake email chains — more than 10 accounts from one IP in 24 hours = all accounts from that IP go to review.
• Buying votes on Fiverr — the voter diversity score (IP + country + fingerprint) surfaces this in 30 seconds.
• Paying real humans to vote — legal, but if the entry's utility is zero, the panel will mark it as "AI-slop, rally-farmed" and DQ it.

What DOES work

• Building something genuinely useful and shipping a clear 60-sec demo.
• Sharing your entry URL on X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Reddit. Rallying your real audience is the entire point.
• Writing a pitch that makes someone's thumb stop in the feed.
• Asking your users / newsletter / community to vote — as long as they're real humans with real emails.

Transparency

After the contest, we publish:

• Vote-time histograms for the top 1,000 (so you can see clustering yourself).
• Voter-country diversity per finalist.
• Flag counts + resolutions.
• The full DQ log with reasons.

If you think we got a decision wrong, the appeal window is 48 hours. Email contest@metercall.ai.