The leaderboard is a spot where you can see who are the “Whales” of the game are broken down by various metrics. 

As a default, the leaderboard displays the top 50 players who have invested the most into the platform. However, don’t let the dollar amounts fool you, the amount they invested is not completely accurate. The system tracks the dollars spent, so if a user happened to sell a property or some of resources, such as Jewels or Cydroids to another player, then reinvested those funds, it not both the funds from the original purchase, and the funds they reinvested.

The first filter available gives you the view, or player, countries by flag, or by territory, or continents by flag or by territory. The difference between by flag or by territory comes from the fact that players can change their flag to that of any country in the world, regardless from where they are actually located. So while a player can be geographically located in The United States, they could choose to represent their properties using The Isle of Man flag. Most users do this for aesthetic reasons, or to create tile art. By territory does reflect the geographic location the user is located. 

You can also sort the leaderboard by several options:

• Credits spent – How much invested (See above for the caveat)
• Most Tiles – Number of individual tiles owned
• High Quality Jewels – Luminous and Brilliant jewels owned
• Holo-Building Existing – Total number of holobuildings existing on properties
• Essence Claimed over the past 24 hours*
• Essence Claimed over the past 7 Days*
• Most expensive properties purchased*

* = Details not available on an individual person basis.

Lastly you can also filter the leaderboard by the flag being represented by the player, either by country, or by continent.

In the case of continents, if a player is using the flag for Gambia, they would show up under Africa, along with players using the flags of Egypt, Zimbabwe, etc. 

You may  be questioning “International Territory” as it doesn’t have a flag representing it. The players using this setting for a flag show up blank or slightly shaded on the map.