Member status: ranks, seals, and bonus capacity

What Member status is

Your paid tier (Contributor, Executive, or Premier) is what you pay for. Member status sits on top of that and is earned: a ladder of four ranks, Pioneer, Ranger, Captain, Commander, plus two parallel honors, Founder and Trustee, that recognize how long you have been a Member, how much data you have contributed, and how many peers you have brought into the network. Every rank pays out in bonus Intelligence Units (IU) each month, on top of your tier's included allotment. Rank cannot be bought. It moves only as tenure, contribution, and advocacy accumulate.

Status exists because a data trust is worth more the longer operators stay in it and the more they put into it. The ladder is Verinode's way of making that visible and rewarding it in the currency you already use every month: Intelligence Capacity.

Where to find it

• On the Settings home page (/settings), a square tile sits next to your Membership card at the top: Membership card carries your paid tier; the tile beside it carries your earned standing. Contributors see a Membership status teaser reading "Become a Pioneer," Members see their current seal(s), headline rank, and monthly bonus.
• Click that tile, or open Status under the Membership group in the Settings sidebar, to land on the full page at iq.verinode.ai/settings/status.
• On the Settings home page, the sidebar row itself reads Status, with a value showing your rank and bonus (for example "Ranger · +225 IU/mo") or Become a Member if you are not yet on a paid tier.

The You-are-here hero

At the top of the Status page, your current seal renders large next to:

• Your status, your rank label (Pioneer, Ranger, Captain, or Commander).
• The bonus line: "+[N] IU every month, earned", the exact number of bonus Intelligence Units your current rank adds to your monthly allotment.
• A short paragraph explaining what the rank means (its "meaning" line from the ladder, see below), so a locked rank reads as something to aspire to rather than a checklist.

If you are a Contributor and have not become a Member yet, this hero instead reads "Pioneer from day one" with the line "+[N]% capacity, every month" and an explanation that every Member starts as a Pioneer and earns bonus capacity from the first month, then climbs from there as they contribute and bring peers in. A Become a Member button sits underneath (this button is suppressed on the Settings home tile itself, where the upgrade ask already lives on the Membership card, so you are never shown the same prompt twice).

Next rank: the climb, with live progress bars

Below the hero, if you have not reached Commander yet, an accent panel shows the next rung you are climbing toward:

• The next seal and its label, tagged Next rank.
• Its bonus: "+[N]% capacity, every month."
• A set of progress bars, one per requirement that applies to that next rank:

- Tenure, in months. Once you reach the requirement it shows the target with a checkmark; until then it shows "have / need" (for example "8 / 12 months"). - Contributions, your lifetime count of data contributions to the network, shown the same have/need way. This row only appears for ranks that require a contribution count. - Referrals, only shown for ranks that require at least one referral. - Complete profile, a binary row reading Done or Not yet rather than a bar, only shown for ranks that require a complete profile.

• A line underneath reading "Also unlocks:" followed by the next rank's perks in plain language.

Each bar fills as a percentage of progress and turns green with a checkmark once the requirement is met. Verinode evaluates your status on a periodic sweep, not the instant a threshold is crossed, so a bar reading fully met means the next promotion sweep will pick it up.

Once you reach Commander, this panel is replaced by a closing line: "Commander." followed by Commander's perks, since there is no next rung to climb.

The Order: every seal, always on screen

Under the progress panel, The Order lays out all four ladder seals side by side, Pioneer, Ranger, Captain, Commander, so the whole climb is visible at once:

• Earned ranks (including your current one) render in full color.
• Ranks above your current one render dimmed, with reduced saturation, so they are visible but clearly not yet reached.
• Your current rank carries a You are here pill.
• Earned ranks below your current one show a checkmark before their name.
• Every seal shows its bonus percentage underneath (for example "+15% capacity"), and non-current, non-you-are-here ranks show their earned-criteria line (for example "12+ months + 25+ data contributions") in small muted text.

If you are a Contributor teaser viewer, every seal in The Order renders dimmed since none are earned yet.

Parallel honors: Founder, Trustee, Advisor

Underneath The Order, an Honors section appears only if you hold at least one of these. Unlike the ladder, these run in parallel to your rank, not instead of it, so a Captain who is also a Founder holds both at once:

• Founder, granted to the first cohort of paid Members. It is a historic, one-time designation, not something newly earned going forward.
• Trustee, earned through active referrals and sustained engagement, and re-earned annually rather than kept permanently.
• Advisor, reserved for operators appointed to the Operator Advisory Council. This one is evaluated separately from the billing-based ladder and only appears when your account carries that appointment.

Each honor shows its seal, label, and a short line describing what it recognizes.

The full drill-down: rank details, stats, and how bonus IUs work

Clicking through from the Status tile (in some views this opens as a slide-over) surfaces a deeper explainer beneath the same hero:

The ranks. Every rung, including Founder and Trustee, listed as a full card: seal, label, bonus percentage, the one-line "meaning" of the rank, its earned criteria in plain language, and its perks. Cards you have earned are tinted and marked Earned; cards you have not are shown in muted tones. Clicking any seal opens it full-size in a modal with its description.

Where you stand. A short stat list:

• Tenure, your months as a paid Member, to one decimal place.
• Data contributions, your lifetime count.
• Referrals (lifetime), total referrals you have made.
• Active referrals (Trustee), shown as a fraction against the qualifying threshold for that honor.
• Profile complete, Yes or Not yet.

How bonus IUs work. Status bonus IUs land in a separate bucket on your account and refresh every month alongside your tier's included allotment. Like your included IUs, they are lose-it-or-use-it within the month, unused bonus IUs do not carry over. Founder and Trustee each grant the same flat monthly bonus, on top of whatever your ladder rank already pays.

Country and Service badges. Two further badge categories, separate from the rank ladder and from each other, appear only if you hold them: a Country badge recognizing the country you operate your business in, and a Service badge honoring prior military service. These sit below the ladder and honors sections and open the same enlarge-on-click modal.

How your rank and bonus are actually calculated

• Rank is per operator business, not per individual user. If your account has multiple members, everyone sees the same operator-level rank.
• Tenure starts from the date of your first paid subscription; if you have not had one yet, it falls back to when your operator account was created.
• Bonus IUs are a percentage of your tier's monthly allotment, not a flat number, so the bonus scales with your membership: the same rank is worth more bonus IU on Premier than on Executive, because it is a percentage of a larger monthly pool. Founder and Trustee, when held, always pay at least as much bonus as your ladder rank alone would, whichever is higher applies.
• Rank only applies to paid Members. Contributors see the teaser experience across the tile, sidebar row, and the full page, since there is nothing to display yet, only a preview of what becomes available at signup.

Empty states, verbatim

• Contributor, Settings home tile: headline "Become a Pioneer," subtext "+25 IUs / month from day one," and: "Rank is earned, not bought. Members earn Pioneer at signup, then climb to Ranger, Captain, Commander. Founder and Trustee are open to a limited cohort."
• Contributor, full Status page hero: "Pioneer from day one," with the meaning line for Pioneer and: "From there the order climbs as you contribute and bring peers in."
• Contributor, drill-down hero: "Rank is earned, not bought," with: "Member status sits on top of the paid tier and rewards tenure, contribution depth, and advocacy with bonus Intelligence Units every month. Members earn Pioneer at signup; the rest is climbed."
• No honors earned: the Honors section is omitted entirely rather than shown empty.
• No Country or Service badges: that section is omitted entirely.
• At Commander: the next-rank panel is replaced with "Commander." followed by Commander's perks line, since there is nothing further to climb toward.

Data sources

Related reading

• Membership and billing
• Membership tiers and upgrading
• Understanding your margin
• Benchmarks overview