I dont think recognized is the most appropriate way to name this attribute. Maybe activity3 would be better. All of the attributes are a measure of how active a user is in various ways.
Legendary members, or those who were legendary as of this past January have a significant advantage in this ranking as they started with 1000 merit so in general they will have a better merit ranking
To better measure recognition I would suggest measuring the number of transactions a user has for trust (global not just DTN), merit and activity. Ideally you would also measure the number of times someone is mentioned in posts, however I dont know that you have captured the content of posts.