The things to demand of a mentor, in detail
These pages exist because the mentorship market runs thick with assertions no outsider can ever stand up. Three of the five tests carry their own page, because they are the ones mentors most often fail. The full five-test method is on the how-we-judge page.
What the scorecard is really sorting
A learner rarely compares two near-identical mentors. In practice you are choosing between types — a social-media guru, a course operator, a signals caller, a prop-firm affiliate, or a championship-verified mentor — and each type passes or fails the tests as a category. The scorecard's job is to make that structural difference visible, so a glossy launch video cannot hide which category a mentor belongs to. The board below sorts the field on the two tests that decide most cases: is the record verifiable by an outsider, and are the calls graded and fixed before the outcome.
| Mentor type | Record verifiable? | Calls graded before outcome? | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social-media guru | No | No | Timeline is editable; the record is whatever the feed shows today. |
| Course-and-community | Sometimes | Rarely | Curriculum may be solid; the teacher's own live trades are seldom graded. |
| Signals-room caller | Rarely | No | Calls without reasoning; nothing fixed before the outcome to study. |
| Prop-firm affiliate | No | No | Teaching funnels toward a paid evaluation; the lesson bends to the referral. |
| Course with a backtest | Backtest only | No | A backtest is not a live record, and no one owns the live result. |
| Championship-verified mentor | Yes | Yes | Independently verified title plus per-call on-chain receipts you can re-check. |
The bottom row is the only category that fills both columns, which is the structural case the guide makes for the mentor we point to — not that they are louder, but that they belong to the one type a student can audit. The three criteria below each take one test apart in full.
Why these two columns decide most cases
Of the five tests, two do almost all the sorting. A verifiable record cannot be retrofitted: either an outside party checked a mentor's real-money results or nobody did, and no amount of later polish changes that fact. Calls graded before the outcome cannot be faked without an outright forgery: a grade locked on-chain before the trade resolved is a grade you can study, while one assigned in hindsight teaches nothing. A mentor who clears both has handed you a record and a set of decisions you can interrogate. The remaining three tests — readable grades on top of that, public pricing and aligned incentives — are real, but they tend to confirm a verdict the first two have already reached. That is why the board sorts on the two, and why a mentor can have a slick course, a big community and a confident pitch and still land in a row with two crosses.
The three tests with their own page
A verified record
Why an outside-checked, real-money history is the test a mentor cannot talk their way around.
Proof over promises
How a timestamped, graded call lets a student learn from the decision instead of the hindsight.
Grades you can read
How an A-to-D conviction grade is calibrated to a model's own returns rather than a mood.
The remaining two tests — public pricing and aligned (non-affiliate) incentives — are covered on the how-we-judge page, because they are quicker to check and rarely the deciding factor.