Yes it is. There is direct dependency between your forum rank and you reward from the signature bounty campaigns. Hero members gain in one week stakes equal to 3.5 weeks for junior member. So the reward will be x3.5.
Before this year the only thing that could up your rank was activity - if you write more than 14 posts every two weeks you will gain higher rank in some time.
But now we have merits - kinda likes. You can send and receive merits. But you cant send as much as you receive - 2 merits to you generate 1 merit that you can send to others.





This is exactly what I hate about this merit. Merit to me is now in favour of the elites in this forum. Like you rightly said, rank was done by your activity which makes it easy to rank higher but since the introduction of merit, I think some junior members rank will remain stagnant till thy kingdom comes...