Delta

The compare workspace's arithmetic applied to these two rows. Each dimension's share of the gap is its weight × the difference, on the displayed scale — it reproduces the displayed gap of 15.0 to within rounding.

Reading the evidence ledger…

1. 29 September 2026Current verified snapshot · methodology 2026.10.18Score 67, #4 of 7. 4 of 4 criteria scored. History starts here; earlier values are not interpolated.
2. 10 October 2026
   2026.10.8When nothing serves your country, the list shown for reference is the published ranking · platform-wide
   • fixed The reference list shown when nothing serves your country is the published order with the published scores, and a build check now fails any such list out of that order or with a score the ranking does not publish.
   • fixed The explorer prints an overall rank only for a row the published ranking holds; a country entrant such as Coinbase Commerce for US merchants shows no overall rank.
   • changed Published orders do not move. Country results change only where nothing serves the country: in India bill pay keeps Bitcoin Well first and now shows Strike second, as published; 35 such runs across all categories and countries now match the published list exactly.
3. 10 October 2026
   2026.10.6A criterion you require re-scores the rows that meet it · platform-wide
   • changed The explorer sends each criterion you require, at any band, as fit_required with your other answers; region, licence, chain and fact filters stay filters. On /best, a required criterion joins For you as a marked preference does, which needs your country; Overall stays the published ranking, filtered.
   • added Every published criterion has a golden case as the explorer sends it (require:<criterion>), so the order a requirement gives is replayed and gated as the published order is, and a change to it needs an entry here.
4. 1 October 2026
   2026.10.0Layer-2 chains are ranked on whether you can leave with your funds
   • added Four l2_chains criteria with published band ladders: proof system (18), withdrawals if the operator stops (18), rollup stage (14) and exit window before an upgrade (6). EVM equivalence moves 40 to 17, Ethereum data availability 25 to 15 and maturity 35 to 12. Every chain's emergency exit window reads None, so the exit-window ladder also reads L2BEAT's regular, non-emergency upgrade path (Arbitrum One 10 days, Starknet and Arbitrum Nova 7, zkSync Era 4 days 3 hours); data availability separates full transaction data (10) from state diffs only (9, L2BEAT: Onchain (SD)). A stage L2BEAT marks Under review keeps its last score for at most one 45-day cycle and is never interpolated.
   • changed l2_chains ranks through scoreCriterionObjective on fitStrength, like the other criterion-ranked categories; the hand-written structural scorer is deleted. All 105 criterion scores across 15 rows carry a quote and source in research-pending/rereads/2026-10-01-l2_chains.json; 131 of 135 quotes re-fetched verbatim on the read date, and the four behind a bot wall or a JavaScript shell were read by the adversarial model run.
   • fixed Four facts corrected on the read: Scroll, Mantle and Blast are EVM-compatible, not equivalent (their own documentation, and for Blast live RPC probes); Starknet's public mainnet opened to users in 2022, not 2021. Arbitrum Nova's data has gone to Ethereum as blobs since 31 August 2026, and the row now leads with the Arbitrum DAO's decision to minimise it.
   • fixed The old scorer credited Ethereum data availability whenever the data-availability text contained the word "ethereum", so Arbitrum Nova's committee ("…Ethereum L1 rollup fallback") and Polygon zkEVM's off-chain data ("…Ethereum L1 before the sunset") both scored full marks. Data availability is now a quoted L2BEAT reading.