The above means less than 95 people have become hero members
It's much less: many of those (less than) 95 users had a high rank already and didn't rank up.
My weekly Merit update isn't finished yet, but here's a sneak preview with this morning's data:
17 users earned 1000+ Merit
76 users earned 500+ Merit
204 users earned 250+ Merit
607 users earned 100+ Merit
7336 users earned 10+ Merit
27732 users earned 1+ Merit
Ranking up is no longer for everyone, and I think that's a good thing. I haven't seen too many good users who are being limited by Merit, but if you find them, please report their posts their good posts
here.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who use the forum every month, most probably won’t participate continuously for 16 months, but I would expect for at least thousands to have enough activity to be a hero.
I don't think it's realistic to expect thousands of users to earn more Merit than Activity. And I think you're off on the total number of real users, hundreds of thousands of active posters doesn't mean they're all unique users. I expect many alt accounts, and ranking up more than one account is virtually impossible (
empirical evidence here).
I would also point out that I had extensive knowledge about bitcoin when the merit system was introduced, which probably increased the amount of merit I received. This would not be the case for the average person.
I'm pretty sure your red trust discourages people from meriting you, otherwise you'd probably have had much more by now.