Burning More Is Not a Skill. Compounding Is.

The short version: whoburnedmore

whoburnedmore is a leaderboard that ranks developers by who burned the most tokens. It is a pure burn-rate competition — the premise is in the name. Who burned more? That person wins. It is honest about what it measures: consumption. But consumption is not skill. An operator who re-sends the same context every turn and burns 50M input tokens will top the board. An operator who compounds cached context and produces the same output with 5M tokens will rank lower.

SigRank takes the same token telemetry and asks a different question: who compounded the best?The headline metric, Υ Yield = cache_read × output / input², rewards the operator who reuses cached context efficiently and penalizes the one who burns fresh input without leverage. whoburnedmore counts the fuel; SigRank measures the lap time. Both matter. Only one tells you who is winning.

Feature comparison

Why burning more isn't a skill

whoburnedmore answers "who burned the most tokens?" That is a consumption contest, not a skill ranking. Two operators can spend the same 50K input tokens and get wildly different outcomes. One reuses cached context efficiently and produces 30K output tokens; the other re-sends the same context every turn and produces 3K. Same spend, ten-fold difference in signal. On whoburnedmore, they tie. On a yield leaderboard, the gap is obvious.

SigRank's headline metric, Υ = cache_read × output / input², measures exactly that gap. It rewards the operator who compounds cached context into output and penalizes the one who burns fresh input without leverage. whoburnedmore gives you the total; SigRank tells you whether the cascade it describes is compounding or burning.

From burn to yield

If you already run whoburnedmore, you have the token counts. SigRank reads the same telemetry and adds the scoring layer burn rankings never had:

npm install -g sigrank
sigrank enroll      # create your operator identity
sigrank submit      # reads logs, scores, signs, publishes

Prefer to inspect before you submit? Run sigrank me --dry-run to see your scored payload locally, or paste your token counts into the /score calculator to compute your Υ Yield, class tier, and compression ratio instantly, no account, no submission, just the numbers.

Frequently asked questions

Is SigRank a whoburnedmore alternative?

They are opposites in what they celebrate. whoburnedmore ranks developers by who burned the most tokens — it is a pure burn-rate competition. SigRank ranks by cascade yield: Υ = cache_read × output / input². If you want to compete on who burned the most, whoburnedmore is that. If you want to compete on who operated the most efficiently, SigRank answers that. Burning more tokens is not a skill — compounding them is.

Why is burning more tokens not a skill?

Burning more tokens measures consumption, not competence. An operator who re-sends the same context every turn and burns 50M input tokens to produce 3K output has burned a lot and produced little. An operator who compounds cached context and burns 5M tokens to produce 30K output has burned less and produced more. The first operator tops whoburnedmore. The second tops SigRank. Fuel consumption is not lap time. Burning more is the opposite of efficient operating.

What does whoburnedmore not measure that SigRank does?

whoburnedmore reports total tokens burned and ranks by that single number. SigRank derives the cascade architecture from the same four pillars: Υ Yield (is signal compounding or burning?), compression ratio (output per input), SNR (signal density), Leverage (how much cached context amplifies your input), and Velocity (tokens per unit time). whoburnedmore tells you who burned the most; SigRank tells you who got the most signal per token spent.

Can I use both whoburnedmore and SigRank?

Yes. whoburnedmore gives you the burn-rate competition. SigRank gives you the efficiency layer that burn rankings cannot provide. Run `sigrank submit` to publish your cascade score to the SigRank leaderboard, and keep your whoburnedmore profile for the burn crowd. The two are complementary, not mutually exclusive. The same local logs feed both. Just know that a high whoburnedmore rank and a high SigRank yield are not the same thing.

Which is better for finding skilled AI operators?

SigRank. Burn-rate leaderboards conflate activity with skill. The operator who burns the most tokens is not the most skilled — they are the most active, or the most wasteful. Yield filters out that noise: it rewards the operator whose cascade is compounding, not the one whose burn rate is highest. If you want to find the best drivers, look at lap times, not fuel consumption.