Somehow this holds true. If you take a look on Altcoin Discussions, you can see a lot of Heroes or Legends spam all around.
Not all members achieved their rank by '
earning' merits, some acquired them through airdrops when the merit system was newly introduced and it was on the basis of their activity and not the value of their content, and ironically some have not been able to earn even a single merit despite owning legendary/Hero member accounts
fix your quotation.
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No one ranked up through airdropped merits because they already received the respective merits equivalent to their rank. For example, if you're a full member before the merit system implementation, you'll receive 100 airdropped merits. So it means if they achieved the rank, it's through earning merits since the introduction of the merit system. I'm one of those people who are close to being a Sr. Member and the merit system serve as the barricade for me to rank up.
It's true that there are some of the legendary/hero members who didn't receive any single merit and you can see them spamming on the Bitcoin or Altcoin Discussion. Even I'm a Sr. Member, we can prove that we're better than them through merit counts. It's been one year already since the merit system so it's possible for us to receive even 1 merit.