Badges

Edge Node Operator Badge Glossary

This page explains every badge in the Edge Node Operator achievement system: what it means, how you earn it, and what it says about your node. Badges are organized into four pillars — Performance, Longevity, Community, and Pioneer Status — plus three specialist categories layered on top: Device Classification, Type-Specific Achievements, and Installation Method Achievements.

A quick note before you dive in: most performance-related badges require your node’s Telemetry Stability score to be at or above 0.80 at the moment the badge would fire. That’s not a separate hurdle to clear — it just means your node needs to be reporting reliably enough that the achievement can actually be verified. A badge doesn’t mean much if we can’t trust the data behind it.

Jump to a section:

Performance Badges
Longevity Badges
Community Badges
Pioneer Status Badges
Device Classification Badges
Type-Specific Achievements
Installation Method Achievements

Performance Badges

These badges track how well your node is actually performing — the direct measure of what you’re contributing to the network.

First Heartbeat

Welcome to the network. This one’s automatic.

How to earn it: Fires the instant your node sends its very first telemetry ping after installation.

Details: No telemetry minimum · No cash bonus · No expiry

Signal Acquired

You made it past day one.

How to earn it: Keep your node running for 24 continuous hours with at least one successful telemetry check-in. A lot of nodes drop off in the first day — this badge means yours didn’t.

Details: No telemetry minimum · No cash bonus · No expiry

Signal Lock

Proof you’re not just online — you’re pulling your weight.

How to earn it: Hold a composite Performance Index at or above the median for your device class for 30 consecutive days, with stable telemetry throughout. The bar is set against operators in your own class tier, so an S1 Raspberry Pi is only measured against other S1 nodes.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · No cash bonus · No expiry

Three Nines

Your hardware reliability badge.

How to earn it: Maintain a Weighted Reliability-adjusted uptime score of 0.97 or higher over any rolling 90-day window. Planned maintenance doesn’t count against you — crashes and mid-task reboots do. It’s not just about being online, it’s about being online for the right reasons.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Big Pipe

Recognition for serious bandwidth contribution.

How to earn it: Rank in the top 10% of network bandwidth contribution within your device class tier for a full calendar month. Resets monthly, so there’s always a fresh shot at it.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable monthly · No cash bonus

Latency Legend

For operators who’ve dialed in their connection.

How to earn it: Land in the top 5% of your device class tier on response-time (TTFB) performance for 30 consecutive days. This one rewards optimization, not just horsepower — a modest connection tuned well can outscore a beefier one that isn’t.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Cache Rich

A volume badge for real workload served.

How to earn it: Serve 10,000 or more verified cache hits in a single calendar month.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable monthly · No cash bonus

Perfect Ten

The composite excellence badge — and it’s genuinely hard to fake.

How to earn it: Sustain a composite Performance Index of 0.95 or higher for 7 consecutive days. Because the score blends all five performance components, you can’t get here by optimizing just one thing — everything has to be firing at once.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Bounced Back

The resilience badge. Recovering counts for something.

How to earn it: Drop below a 0.50 composite score and climb back above 0.80 within 14 days. Struggling nodes happen — this badge exists because coming back from one says something good about you as an operator. Your telemetry just needs to be clean by the time you hit the recovery mark, even if it wasn’t during the dip.

Details: Requires stable telemetry at the moment of recovery · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Longevity Badges

These badges track how long you’ve stuck with it. They’re the backbone of your streak — the badge tier grows alongside the streak counter on your profile.

Lights On

Week one, in the books.

How to earn it: Keep your node running for 7 consecutive days.

Details: No cash bonus · No expiry

Interwoven

You made it through the highest-churn window.

How to earn it: Reach 30 consecutive days of active operation. Most operators who are going to drop off do it in the first month — if you’re reading this description because you just earned the badge, you’re past that.

Details: No cash bonus · No expiry

Still Running

Three months in. You’re not “trying this out” anymore.

How to earn it: Reach 90 consecutive days of active operation.

Details: No cash bonus · No expiry

Six Solid

Half a year of showing up.

How to earn it: Reach 180 consecutive days of active operation. By now you’ve probably weathered a hardware hiccup or two and kept going anyway — this one comes with a small cash bonus to mark it.

Details: No cash bonus PI dependency · Recommended cash component: $10-15 · No expiry

Full Rotation

A full year. The real prestige badge.

How to earn it: Reach 365 consecutive days of active operation. This is the strongest cash-bonus badge in the whole system, and it displays your anniversary date on your profile permanently.

Details: Recommended cash component: $25+ · No expiry

Boomerang

Welcome back.

How to earn it: Come back after being offline for more than 14 days, and sustain 30 consecutive days of operation after you return. If you churned and came back, this badge is for you — no judgment, just recognition that you’re here again.

Details: No cash bonus · No expiry

Community Badges

These badges recognize operators who grow and strengthen the community around the network — mainly through referrals and peer recognition.

First Referral

You brought someone else into the network.

How to earn it: Someone you referred completes their own First Heartbeat badge. It only counts once they’ve actually gone live — not just signed up.

Details: No cash bonus beyond standard affiliate earnings · No expiry

Connector

A real, live cohort — not just a referral list.

How to earn it: Have 5 of your referred operators simultaneously active at the same time. Referring 5 people over the years doesn’t count if none of them are still running — this badge is about who’s active right now.

Details: No cash bonus beyond standard affiliate earnings · No expiry

Center of Gravity

The serious referral badge.

How to earn it: Have 10 people you referred each individually clear 30 consecutive days of active operation (they don’t all need to hit that milestone at the same time).

Details: No cash bonus beyond standard affiliate earnings · No expiry

Discord Champion

Voted in by your peers — the only badge that works this way.

How to earn it: Get the most community nominations in your market’s Discord channel during a quarterly vote for the operator who’s been most helpful to others. Comes with temporary elevated channel privileges for the quarter. You can win it more than once — each win is displayed with its quarter and year.

Details: No cash bonus · Awarded quarterly per market

Pioneer Status Badges

These badges are permanent markers of being early in your local market. Every market has its own founding cohort — there’s no single national “first” badge, so being early in your area is a real, defensible claim regardless of how big other markets are.

City Starter

The rarest badge in the system. Exactly one per market, forever.

How to earn it: Be the very first node to activate in your market. You automatically also hold Founding Operator, Charter Member, and First Wave.

Details: Permanent · Non-transferable · No cash bonus · 1 slot per market

Founding Operator

The inner founding circle of your market.

How to earn it: Be one of the first 10 nodes to activate in your market. City Starter holders automatically qualify for this too.

Details: Permanent · Non-transferable · No cash bonus · 10 slots per market

Charter Member

You found the network while it was still young.

How to earn it: Be one of the first 50 nodes to activate in your market. Founding Operators automatically qualify.

Details: Permanent · Non-transferable · No cash bonus · 50 slots per market

First Wave

The broadest founding-era badge — still means something big.

How to earn it: Be one of the first 100 nodes to activate in your market. If your market grows to a couple thousand nodes over time, this badge means you were in the earliest 5%.

Details: Permanent · Non-transferable · No cash bonus · 100 slots per market

Provider Best

Best node on your ISP in your market.

How to earn it: Hold the highest composite Performance Index among all nodes on your same ISP, within your device class tier, for 30 consecutive days. You don’t have to top the whole market leaderboard to earn this — just be the best on your specific provider.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · One concurrent holder per ISP per class per market · No cash bonus

Class Leader

Top of your hardware class, market-wide.

How to earn it: Hold the highest composite Performance Index of any node in your device class tier (S1–S4) in your market for 30 consecutive days. Displayed with your class tier, so “Class Leader - S1” and “Class Leader - S3” are both real, distinct achievements.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · One concurrent holder per class per market · No cash bonus

Category Leader

Top of your device community, market-wide.

How to earn it: Hold the highest composite Performance Index among all nodes of your same device type (Raspberry Pi, Gaming PC, M-Series Mac, etc.) in your market for 30 consecutive days. Requires at least 3 registered nodes of your type in the market so there’s an actual competition to win.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · One concurrent holder per type per market · No cash bonus

Keystone

The highest overall status badge in the system.

How to earn it: Sustain 12 or more consecutive months of active operation, AND have referred 10 or more operators who’ve collectively accumulated 365+ days of combined active operation. This one asks for excellence across longevity and community at the same time — very few operators will ever hold it.

Details: Permanent once earned · Cash bonus reviewed case-by-case

Device Classification Badges

Top of the Class

Extended dominance of your device type in your market.

How to earn it: Hold the #1 composite Performance Index among all nodes of your device type in your market for 60 consecutive days — double the window required for Category Leader. This is for operators who don’t just reach the top of their type cohort, but hold it.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · One concurrent holder per type per market · No cash bonus

Best of the First

First champion of your type, before the competition fully formed.

How to earn it: Hold the top composite Performance Index among your device type in your market at the exact moment the 10th node of that type activates locally. This is a one-time, permanent snapshot — it’s never re-awarded once claimed.

Details: Permanent · Non-transferable · One per type per market · No cash bonus

Local Legend

Sustained excellence over time, not just a hot streak.

How to earn it: Hold Category Leader status in your market for a cumulative total of 6 months — the months don’t need to be consecutive.

Details: Permanent once earned · No cash bonus

The Benchmark

The peer-citation badge — earned by reputation, not just numbers.

How to earn it: Be the most-referenced hardware setup in your market’s Discord channel over a 90-day period, based on how often other operators cite you as their performance target or hardware inspiration. Currently evaluated via manual community manager nomination until Discord integration is live.

Details: No cash bonus · Re-evaluated quarterly

Type-Specific Achievements

These badges are scoped to specific device types, so they reward excellence that’s genuinely meaningful within a particular hardware community. The same badge can be earned by very different hardware — an “Overachiever - Raspberry Pi / SBC” and an “Overachiever - Gaming PC” are both real, but they mean different things in context.

Overachiever

Eligible for: all device types

You’re outperforming your own class, not just holding steady.

How to earn it: Beat your device class’s median composite Performance Index by 0.20 or more, sustained for 30 consecutive days. Because the comparison is internal to your own class, this is achievable no matter what tier of hardware you’re running.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Punching Above Its Weight

Eligible for: Raspberry Pi / SBC, Mini PC, Laptop, Home Assistant Add-on, DIY NAS, Off-the-Shelf NAS (S1/S2 class only)

The cross-class upset badge.

How to earn it: As an S1 or S2 node, rank in the top 25% of the entire market leaderboard — across every class tier, not just your own. This one’s only available to lighter-hardware operators, because the achievement only means something when the disadvantage is real.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Watt Wise

Eligible for: Raspberry Pi / SBC, Mini PC, M-Series Mac, Laptop, Home Assistant Add-on

Efficiency-per-watt, made visible.

How to earn it: Hit a composite Performance Index of 0.80 or higher while running in low-power mode (or with power draw below your class threshold), sustained for 30 consecutive days.

Details: Requires power-monitoring telemetry · Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Always On

Eligible for: DIY NAS, Off-the-Shelf NAS, Enterprise / Repurposed Server, Mini PC

The four-nines badge.

How to earn it: Maintain a reliability-adjusted uptime score of 0.9999 or higher over a rolling 180-day period. Built for hardware categories where 24/7 operation is the whole point.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Somnambulist

Eligible for: M-Series Mac, Mini PC, Laptop

You kept contributing even while your machine “slept.”

How to earn it: Maintain active operation and a composite Performance Index of 0.70 or higher while your host device is in a low-power or sleep-adjacent state, for 14 consecutive days. This one recognizes a genuinely non-trivial configuration achievement, especially on macOS.

Details: Requires sleep-state telemetry · Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Homelab Hero

Eligible for: DIY NAS, Enterprise / Repurposed Server, Gaming PC, CAD Workstation, Media Editing Workstation

For giving old hardware a second life.

How to earn it: Keep a node continuously active for 365 days on hardware you’ve self-described as repurposed or recycled in your profile. This is manually reviewed given its annual cadence.

Details: Manual review required · No cash bonus · No expiry

Fleet

Eligible for: any device type

Recognition for running a real multi-node operation.

How to earn it: Run 3 or more nodes that all maintain a composite Performance Index above 0.70, sustained for 60 consecutive days.

Details: Requires stable telemetry on all nodes · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Racked

Eligible for: Enterprise / Repurposed Server, DIY NAS

For operators running genuine enterprise-grade gear.

How to earn it: Run enterprise-class hardware maintaining a composite Performance Index above 0.70, sustained for 60 consecutive days.

Details: Requires stable telemetry on all nodes · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Cloud Native

Eligible for: Cloud Instance

Optimization matters more than raw hardware here.

How to earn it: As a Cloud Instance node, land in the top 25% of your device class tier for 30 consecutive days. Since cloud operators control configuration and region but not physical hardware, this rewards smart setup choices.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Double Duty

Eligible for: Home Assistant Add-on

Recognition for the Home Assistant community specifically.

How to earn it: Sustain 30 consecutive days of active operation with a composite Performance Index at or above the S1 class median.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Second Life

Eligible for: Laptop

Disciplined contribution despite a genuinely harder setup.

How to earn it: Sustain 60 days of active operation with average daily uptime above 8 hours. Laptop operators deal with mobility and power management that desktop and server operators don’t — this badge acknowledges that constraint rather than ignoring it.

Details: No PI dependency · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Installation Method Achievements

These badges recognize how you’ve deployed your node. They’re informational — they don’t affect your leaderboard rank or Performance Index scoring.

Bare Metal Purist

Committed to the highest-performance deployment model.

How to earn it: Run exclusively via native binary installation for 180 consecutive days while maintaining a composite Performance Index of 0.80 or higher throughout.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Re-earnable · No cash bonus

Container Crafter

Docker performance tuned close to the metal.

How to earn it: As a Docker-installed node, get your composite Performance Index within 0.05 of the native-binary median for your class tier, sustained for 30 consecutive days. Closing that gap takes real configuration discipline.

Details: Requires stable telemetry · Requires comparative analytics between Docker and native deployments · Re-earnable · No cash bonus