as long as one is consistent and putting in the effort, one will retain his or her position.
Bingo. Everyone here should at least strive to become a minnow.
I’ve made it to the (small) dolphin stage. I seriously doubt that I’ll be anything but a dolphin unless I were to power down, something not currently on my radar. I did some rough calculations a while back (might become a post one of these days) showing the very strong likelihood that there will never be more than, at most, about 60,000 dolphins, and the true number is probably much lower than that.