How verification works

What we check depends on the subreddit

Different communities care about different things, so verification starts by asking which subreddit you are verifying for. Net worth communities (fatFIRE, ChubbyFIRE, financialindependence) get a household net worth check. High-earner communities (HENRYfinance) get a career and income signals check. Professional communities (PrivateMarkets, venturecapital, PrivateEquity, CFP, AngelInvesting) get an employment check: do you actually work in this industry. Each check is described below, and each subreddit's mods choose which tiers earn flair there.

The instant net worth check

Powered by Windfall, with identity resolution by CrustData. Your verified email is first resolved to a public professional profile (name, city, employer) so the wealth-records match has real keys to work with. Windfall maintains a net worth dataset for US households, built from public records like property ownership and regulatory filings; it tells us whether your household clears a tier and we keep that yes or no. Adding your name and address is optional and strengthens the match further. We never see or store the underlying figure.

US households only. If the resolution shows you outside the US, we route you to Complete verification before any wealth lookup runs. Professional checks, described below, work worldwide.

The high-earner check

For income-culture subreddits like HENRYfinance. Your email resolves to your role and employer, and we check that role against current market compensation data (levels.fyi cohorts, over a million datapoints). The claim we verify is conservative: even the bottom quarter of people with your exact role at your company clears the community's bar. Where that data doesn't cover you, career and income signals from household records are the fallback.

Either way the answer is a single yes or no. No documents, no video, and we never see your salary figure; cohort data is about your role, not about you. The public label is simply the community's own term, like HENRY.

The professional check

For industry subreddits, the question is not wealth at all: it is whether you actually work in the field. You verify a work email, and we resolve it to a public professional profile: your firm and your role. The check classifies that into a label like Venture Capital, Private Equity, Financial Advisor, or the generic Private Markets. No wealth data is involved anywhere in this path, and it works worldwide.

Complete verification (video proof)

The fallback when records cannot find you, and the standard path for specific-number claims. You record one continuous screen video of you logging into your brokerage, bank, or payroll provider, with the address bar visible from the login page through to the balance or income. This replicates the proof standard communities like fatFIRE already require in modmail; the difference is who reviews it and what survives.

Review is automated: software checks the recording is unedited, the domain stays on one official institution (aggregator apps are not accepted), a real login happens, and the visible amount meets the claimed tier. Clean recordings are decided entirely by software; no person sees them. Recordings the software flags (signs of editing, an ambiguous address bar, a reused file) are reviewed by Flairproof staff before any code is issued. Subreddit moderators never see a recording in either case.

Whatever the outcome, we store a pass or fail and the institution name, never amounts, and the recording is deleted within 7 days.

The household caveat

Public wealth records match households, not individuals. A spouse at the same address inherits the household figure. For community-flair purposes we accept this known limit and disclose it here rather than pretend otherwise. Specific-number claims above what records confirm always require documents.

What a code proves

A code resolves to exactly one Reddit account: the one that completed sign-in when it was minted. If someone else pastes a code into their flair, the lookup page shows the original owner's username, not theirs. The username on the screen matching the flair wearer is the whole check.

The lookup page shows only what the holder chose to display: either a plain verified check, or the check plus their tier. Codes are random, carry no embedded meaning, and expire after 12 months. Holders can revoke instantly; we revoke for fraud.

What we keep, what we delete

The identity details a check needs (name, address, the resolved profile, your email address) exist only while your verification is in progress. The moment it completes, they are deleted; sessions abandoned partway are scrubbed within 24 hours. What remains is a hashed email, the yes or no outcome, and the code itself, stored hashed. The standing database holds no mapping between a Reddit account and a real-world identity.

There is also no reverse search. Nobody, including subreddit mods, can type in a username and ask whether it is verified. Discovery only flows from a code its owner chose to wear.

How subreddits use it

Participating subreddits run a bot built on Reddit's own Devvit platform. Post your code in the sub's verification thread (or send it to modmail) and the bot checks it with us and sets the flair the mods configured. Moderators see decisions, never evidence: their dashboard shows usernames, tiers, and dates for their own sub, which is exactly what the flair already displays publicly, and nothing else.

A nightly sync removes flair for any code that has expired or been revoked, so flair in these subs decays honestly instead of living forever. Mods keep full override control: they can revoke any grant, freeze a user so the bot never touches their flair, or vouch for someone by hand. Users the mods verified before adopting Flairproof can be imported as grandfathered. Vouched and grandfathered users are tracked under those labels; they are never presented as Flairproof-verified.

Every participating subreddit also gets a public stats page at flairproof.com/s/(subreddit): active verifications, revocations, and impersonation attempts blocked. Counts only, no usernames, generated from the same records the mods see, so any community can audit its own sub's use of Flairproof.

Tiers are community thresholds

Net worth and income tiers match common community floors: verified starts at $1M+ net worth or $150K+ income, with higher tiers above that. Career and professional labels, like HENRY or Venture Capital, are statements about employment and income signals, not about wealth. All of these are community thresholds, not legal ones. A Flairproof tier is not a determination of investor accreditation or qualified purchaser status under securities law, and is never used as one.

Who pays for this

Flairproof is free for communities and users. The first 1,000 instant checks each month are covered, and after that an instant check is priced to net us exactly one dollar after processor fees: about $1.34 by card, about $1.03 in USDC. Or wait for the monthly reset. The service is kept alive by a single sponsor shown on the success screen and in our verification and reminder emails, and by keeping usage inside our data providers' free tiers. We do not sell or share your data with the sponsor. Paying never changes the outcome of a check.