How we curate
A directory only matters if its judgement matters. This page documents how we grade, tag, accept, reject, and remove listings. It's terse on purpose so it stays honest.
Grade rubric (A · B · C · D · F)
| Grade | What it means | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| A | Strong privacy posture. Anonymous signup or audited no-logs. Operator track record. Active maintenance. | Mullvad · Proton Mail · Njalla · Monero protocol itself |
| B | Good privacy posture with one trade-off — light email at signup, smaller server fleet, less-audited claims. | IVPN · Wasabi · Tutanota |
| C | Usable but compromised — KYC at the payment edge, fork that hasn't stabilized, narrow feature set. | Windscribe · experimental CoinJoin forks |
| D | Listed for completeness or comparison only. Heavy KYC, weak privacy claims, or unproven operator. | (rarely listed) |
| F | Reserved for providers we have evidence have stolen funds, leaked customer data, or knowingly cooperated with mass deanonymization. Listed only as warnings. | (currently empty) |
KYC tags (pick one per listing)
- NO-KYC — no identity collected at any stage. Cash by mail counts. Crypto-only is necessary but not sufficient (still need no name/email).
- ANON — anonymous account creation (account-ID or random handle) but optional KYC for some features.
- LIGHT KYC — email required, no government ID. Throwaway-email-acceptable.
- KYC — government ID, address proof, or selfie required. Listed for comparison, never recommended.
Feature tags (multi-select, not exclusive)
Free-combine labels that describe properties of the service. Used for the click-to-filter chips on category pages.
open_source·non_custodial·self_hosted·cli_supportedtor_mirror·i2p_mirror·xmr_native·lightning_nativeatomic_swap·audited·port_forwarding·ram_only_servers
Verification cadence
- Every listing carries
last_verified. We re-test the signup + checkout flow on each entry at minimum once per year. - If a listing's last_verified is more than 18 months old we down-grade by one letter until re-verified.
- Sponsorships do not extend the verification clock. A paid listing whose grade decays loses placement until re-graded.
Removal policy
- Evidence of theft — funds taken from users that the operator can't credibly account for: immediate removal, kept as a public F-warning for 24 months.
- Mass KYC overnight — operator pivots from no-KYC to required-KYC without grandfathering existing users: re-graded; usually drops from A to C/D.
- Acquisition by hostile entity — sold to / merged into a compliance-heavy parent: re-reviewed; relisting depends on whether the privacy promises survive.
- Dead links / unmaintained — removed from the listing, kept in the audit log.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure
- The curator team operates other privacy / crypto products independently. When any of those products appear as listings in this directory, they carry the
1ST PARTYchip so the relationship is explicit. - Affiliate links earn us a commission via
/go/<slug>. They do not change a listing's grade or position. Non-monetized listings sit alongside affiliated ones with no UI distinction. - Sponsorship moves a listing up the page and adds a SPONSORED chip. It does not influence grade or KYC tagging — see editorial firewall.
Corrections / disputes
If a listing is wrong — wrong grade, wrong tag, outdated price — DM @xbtoshi on Telegram with evidence. We log every change to the audit table; corrections show up in the public audit feed.