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Appeals process

If Paddock is wrong about a constituent, how it gets fixed and how fast.

Published Document 03 of 04Changes dated in the corrections log
Status

Published 2026-08-27. The service levels in §03.3 are commitments to third parties and are in force from that date for every appeal Paddock receives.

No Paddock index is currently live. The Agent Commerce Index is suspended, not retired: no new monthly print is computed, existing prints are retained unmodified, and it resumes only under a new version tag once the recipient-list truncation is fixed and the attribution basis is recomputable. This document defines how an index is governed when one is published — it is not a claim that a governed index exists today. The appeals channel is open regardless: an attribution error on a published figure is appealable whether or not an index is running.

03.0

How to file

Email [email protected] with Appeal and the constituent name in the subject line. Everything §03.2 requires goes in the first message where possible — an appeal missing its evidence starts its clock on the same day, but is more likely to come back asking for something.

There is no form, no account, and no fee. There is never a fee: see the conflict policy.

03.1

What can be appealed

Anything factual about a row.

GroundExample
Wrong attributiona payTo credited to us that is not the appellant's, or theirs credited elsewhere
Missing attributiona live x402 seller whose settling wallet is not in the graph, so it sits at T2 with zero volume
Wrong tierevidence that a probe_status or eligibility call is incorrect
Wrong settled volumethe 30-day figure disagrees with the appellant's own records
Wrong exclusiona wallet on the circular/flagged or facilitator denylist that should not be
What cannot be appealed

The methodology itself, the weighting basis, or a decision that a constituent's real volume is too small to qualify. Those are methodology changes (§01.6), not errors, and they go through an ADR — not an appeal, and never as a favour to the party asking.

03.2

Evidence required

An appeal without evidence is a request, and requests do not move the index.

Every appeal states the constituent, the specific row and field disputed, the period, and what the appellant asserts the correct value is.

By ground

  • Attribution (wrong or missing). The wallet must be self-declared by the seller at a fetchable location: a live 402 whose payment requirements carry the payTo (body or payment-required header), a .well-known/x402.json, or a CDP Bazaar registration under the domain. Paddock verifies it independently by probing that location — the appellant's assertion is a pointer, never the proof. A parsed payTo is the only positive signal; an HTTP 200 at a well-known path is not evidence, because a single-page app returns one for any path.
  • Tier or probe status. A reproducible request — method, URL, and the response — that Paddock can re-run.
  • Settled volume. On-chain transaction references for the disputed period.
  • Exclusion. Evidence addressing the specific finding: for a circular flag, the external-payer relationships the detection did not see.
Off-chain assertions are not evidence

A statement of ownership, an invoice, a screenshot, or a signed letter cannot establish that a wallet settles for a domain. Only something published at the domain, or observable on-chain, can.

03.3

Service levels

Business days are Monday to Friday, UTC. The clock starts on receipt of the appeal, not on receipt of a complete one.

Acknowledgementwithin 5 business days of receipt

Paddock acknowledges an appeal within 5 business days of receipt. The acknowledgement confirms receipt, issues a reference the appellant can quote, and — where the appeal is incomplete — names exactly what is missing.

Resolutionwithin 30 calendar days of acknowledgement

Paddock resolves an appeal within 30 calendar days of the acknowledgement, with a written decision stating the outcome and the evidence relied on.

Extensioncommunicated before day 30

If a resolution needs more time, Paddock communicates the extension before day 30, with a new date.

Effect of a decision

OutcomeWhen it takes effect
Upheld, or upheld in partat the next rebalance, or off-cycle under §02.3 if material
Declined, or inconclusivethe row does not change; the decision is published either way (§03.4)
No tighter commitment exists

These are the only timing commitments Paddock makes on an appeal. No stage of the process carries a tighter deadline, and an appeal filed against a provisional constituent list is not promised a decision before that rebalance takes effect.

An appeal filed against a provisional list is still worth filing early — it is more likely to be decided before the effective date, and it is the reason the provisional list is published five days ahead at all. But “more likely” is not a promise, and this page does not make one. Where such an appeal is upheld after the rebalance has taken effect, the change is given effect off-cycle under §02.3.

Paddock is a solo operation. These targets are set to be met by one person, not to sound impressive. If they cannot be met they will be lengthened publicly, not quietly missed — and lengthening them is a dated entry in the corrections log, because a service level is a published commitment and changing one silently is exactly the failure this whole document exists to prevent.

03.4

Outcomes

Four, and every one is recorded.

OutcomeMeaning
Upheldthe appellant is right; the row changes
Upheld in partsome fields change
Declinedthe evidence does not establish the claim. The decision states what would have
Inconclusivethe evidence is credible but cannot be verified from any source Paddock can reach. The row does not change, and the inconclusive finding is published beside it

Inconclusive exists so that “we could not verify this” is never silently recorded as “this is false”. It is the same discipline as PROBE-INCONCLUSIVE in §01.2.

A declined appeal is published too, with its reason. An appeals process whose declines are invisible reads as a process with no declines.

03.5

Logging

Every appeal enters an appeals register with: reference, date received, constituent, ground, outcome, decision date, and effect.

An upheld appeal that changes a published figure — or its basis — also gets a corrections-log entry, per the standing disclosure rule: factual, one entry, no narrative, stating what changed, from what to what, and whether anyone who quoted the old figure needs to restate it.

An appeal that changes nothing published does not get a corrections-log entry. The register is the record for those. The corrections log is for published figures — and for the published commitments on these four pages.

03.6

Who decides

Today: the repository owner. There is no independent committee, and this document does not pretend otherwise — a solo operation with an invented oversight board is worse than one that says it is solo.

What substitutes for independence is that the evidence standard in §03.2 is the same one Paddock's own promotions must clear. A constituent's wallet enters the attribution graph through the same automated gate, requiring the same self-declared proof, whether it arrives by appeal or by our own research. The gate is fail-closed: no evidence, no promotion, regardless of who is asking.

Conflicts. Where an appellant has any commercial relationship with Paddock, that relationship is disclosed in the decision record. See the conflict policy — and note that a commercial relationship cannot buy an appeal outcome, which is the first of the four firewall rules.

— Keep going

What to read next.

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The State of Agent Commerce — the citable monthly report on what AI agents actually buy.

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Real transaction volume by category. Three sources merged into one live table.

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