Editorial Guidelines

These are the rules the TokenSpin desk works to. They are written down so you can check our output against them, and so that we cannot quietly drift when a shortcut looks tempting. TokenSpin is an independent, informational publication about crypto rewards and the scams that cluster around them. We are not an operator, not a gambling site, and not a broker. We do not run any programme we write about.

Sourcing: primary or it does not run

The default standard is a primary source. For a rewards programme that means the project’s own announcement, its official documentation, its verified accounts, its contracts or its published terms — not a screenshot, not an aggregator listing, not a post from an account claiming insider knowledge.

Where a claim only exists second-hand, we either trace it back to the origin or we say plainly that we could not. “Widely reported” is not a source. If two credible primary sources conflict, we present the conflict rather than picking whichever version makes a cleaner sentence.

Anything we cannot verify does not get published as fact. On the Rewards Radar the consequence is concrete: an entry that cannot be traced to an official source is excluded or explicitly flagged as unverified. It never gets the benefit of the doubt just because it looks popular. The full method is set out in how we vet.

Every listing is hand-checked

The Radar is editorial work, not an automated feed. Each listing is checked by a person against the official source, given a plain-language risk rating with a stated reason, and stamped with the date it was last reviewed. If something cannot be verified, it is excluded or flagged rather than quietly included.

This is slower and produces a shorter list than scraping every airdrop announcement on the internet. That is the trade we have deliberately made. A long list you cannot trust is worse than a short one you can.

No AI-written article prose, no invented people

Two commitments that are easy to state and easy to check:

• Article prose is written by people. We do not publish machine-generated copy as editorial writing. Tools may be used for the boring edges of the job — spotting typos, formatting, transcribing, sanity-checking a calculation — but the analysis, the judgement and the sentences are ours, and a human is accountable for every published word.
• We do not invent personas. No fabricated reviewer names, no stock-photo headshots, no borrowed credentials, no invented years of experience. Publishing under a collective desk byline is a choice we explain on our about page. A named byline you cannot verify adds nothing except the appearance of authority.

Both rules exist for the same reason: fake authority is the raw material of nearly every scam we cover. We are not going to use the technique ourselves and then warn you about it.

How we describe rewards

Rewards, airdrops, quests, staking incentives and referral schemes are described as what they are: uncertain, frequently changing, and often worth far less than the headline suggests. Specifically:

• We never describe a reward as guaranteed income, passive income, or a yield you can count on.
• We do not project future token values or imply what a distribution will be “worth”.
• We state eligibility conditions and the ways they commonly fail, not just the upside.
• We name the costs — time, gas fees, lock-ups, tax consequences — where they exist.
• Where the realistic outcome is “probably very little”, we say so, even about programmes we list.

We also never ask readers to connect a wallet, sign a transaction, approve a token, or enter a seed phrase. Nothing we publish requires it.

Independence from what we cover

We are not paid by the programmes we write about. There is no pay-to-list arrangement and no sponsored placement, and no commercial consideration can change a risk rating, soften a warning, or keep a listing alive — the detail is in our affiliate disclosure. Projects do not see coverage before publication and cannot request changes to it. Criticism is not negotiable; corrections of fact always are.

When we get it wrong

We expect to make mistakes and we would rather find them fast. Substantive errors get a dated correction note on the page describing what changed; typos and formatting are simply fixed. Where new information means a programme is riskier than we said, the rating moves and the change is visible rather than quietly backdated. The full process, including how to report something, is on our corrections page.

Everything published here is informational and general in nature. It is not financial advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or participate in anything.