Frequently asked questions

Beltchecker.com is an online database for practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It also allows the community to verify belt ranks through community voting.

Beltchecker.com will always be free to use.

• To get verified, you need to provide your full belt promotion history, photo verification, name verification, and receive enough community votes to confirm your profile’s trustworthiness.
• The number of votes required depends on your belt rank.
• Only verified profiles can vote.
• The higher a verified profile's belt rank, the more weight their vote carries.
• Any changes to your promotion history will require re-verification of all previously received votes.

You can use this site however you prefer. It can serve as a 'who's who' database of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioners, a social media platform, a way to manage your academy's members, or a tool to verify or dispute belt ranks, instructors, and competitors. You may also use it simply for entertainment.

You don’t have to! However, community verification can certify that your skills and credentials are legitimate. This can be helpful if you are competing, teaching, or need to prove your rank in other ways.

A public promotion history allows other community members to verify or refute your information based on their criteria. This helps maintain accuracy and establish trust within the community.

The IBJJF is a private organization that requires certification for competing in their events. If you don’t plan to compete in IBJJF events, you don’t need their certification. Beltchecker verification does not grant access to IBJJF competitions.

The Beltchecker network is developed and maintained by martial arts enthusiasts from around the world. They are not affiliated with any single style or organization.

No. While some developers and beta testers are connected to BJJ Globetrotters, this project is entirely independent. No administrators, moderators, or site owners have more voting power than regular users.

In order for the community to start verifying your belt rank, you need to complete the following steps:

• Upload a profile picture
• Verify your profile picture
• Verify your legal name
• Fill out your complete promotion history

Once this is done, your profile will be automatically opened to receive votes from verified members of the community. The number of voting points you need for verification depends on your belt rank. The number of voting points other users can give you, also depends on their verified belt rank.

The profiles on this site must be trustworthy before we can allow them to vote to verify other people and their belt ranks. Therefore, we need to make sure that they belong to who they claim they belong to, so we don't suddenly have fake profiles voting to verify or dispute other people. We verify your profile picture by making you upload a selfie where you hold a little handwritten note with your name and user ID on it. By comparing the face on this selfie with the face in your profile picture, we can with relative certainty confirm that the profile picture is indeed of you. This is also why it is important that your profile picture shows your face clearly and your face only.

The profiles on this site must be trustworthy before we can allow them to vote to verify other people and their belt ranks. Therefore, we need to make sure that they belong to who they claim they belong to, so we don't suddenly have fake profiles voting to verify or dispute other people. We have two methods to verify your name: One is to do a secure credit card payment with a name on the card that matches your profile's. If the payment goes through, we can be pretty sure that it's you and your card. The second method is by uploading a picture of a document with your name on. It could be an electricity bill, an ID card of sorts or any other official looking letter. Make sure to cover any sensitive information, even though we truncate the image as soon as we've processed it.

No, this site and all functionality on it is completely free. While you can instantly verify your name by making a $5 secure credit card payment, you also have the option to upload a picture of a document with your name on. Moderators will check that it matches your profile and verify your name that way instead.

Sure! You can use all the functionality on the site without verifying your identity. The only exceptions are that you can not receive/cast any votes nor can you post in the forum.

Completing your profile can be done in a matter of a few minutes. Our voluntary moderators are located around the world and need to validate your ID documents. This can take anything from a few minutes to several hours, depending on when they're awake and online.

For an overview of your verification status please see your verification overview page.

First double check your spam folder. Then you can try the 'resend verification email' function in the login box. If you're still not receiving any emails, try with another email account.

You don't have to! In fact, we encourage people to not upload their passport, drivers license or similar (however, all uploaded images are being truncated the moment they've been approved/rejected by moderators). You can upload a utility bill, membership card or anything else with your name on. Alternatively, you can instantly verify your name by making a $5 secure credit card payment with a card that matches the name on your profile.

Regardless, you should not upload any sensitive documents to verify your name. If necessary, make sure that you cover any information on the documents that you don't want anyone else to see. All uploaded images are truncated the moment they've been approved/rejected by the moderators.

You don't have to! Just verify by uploading a picture of a document with your name on it instead.

No, this is optional. In general, you can add anything to your profile you please; it is ultimately up to the verified members of the site if they want to verify you or not, based on how trustworthy your profile looks.

Make a record for the belt you skipped and put the same day as you were promoted. Then write in the comment why it was skipped.

If you change your belts (stripes not included), who promoted you or the date of promotion, all your votes will be up for re-verification. This is on purpose to make sure that any changes in promotion history are being verified by those who voted for you. Don't worry, everyone will automatically receive a notification and a link to re-confirm their vote once they have a chance to look through your updated promotion history.

To ensure all profiles are verified and trustworthy, any changes in your legal name or profile photo will trigger re-verification of your ID from the moderators. This is to avoid people verifying one name/photo and then afterwards making the profile look like it belongs to someone else. If you changed your profile photo, it is automatically sent to the moderators to be re-verified, which shouldn't take long. If you changed your name, you have to verify the new one by credit card or uploading documents.

Please try the "reset password" function or send us an email on [email protected] and we'll help you out.

The voting system is a mechanism that allows the community to verify that a profile look legitimate and is correctly filled out. This way we avoid people creating silly/spammy/fake profiles and we can trust that the information people provide on their profiles is trustworthy. All verification is done by the already verified users of the site.

In order to verify your profile, you need to first provide name verification, profile photo verification and your full belt promotion. Once this is done, your profile will be automatically opened to receive votes from verified members of the community. The number of voting points you need for verification depends on your belt rank. The number of voting points other users can give you, also depends on their verified belt rank.

This is an option. You can tag your instructor's profile in each belt promotion record and he/she can verify or dispute having done the promotion; the decision being displayed publicly on your profile. The community and individuals are then free to choose if they want to use that as standard for rank verification. However, it quickly pose a fundamental problem. How do we verify your instructor? If we go by instructor-to-student verification only, we would have to do keep track of a hierarchical verification model that would quickly run back so many years that we can't possible confirm your instructor's instructor's instructor. Not to mention that we would need every instructor to sign up before any student could join and be verified. Instead, our system offers an alternative validation system that works by flat community verification, which ensures that anyone can have their rank certified by their peers, as well as their instructor, given this person is present on the site.

Beltchecker.com leaves verification to the community, so it's similar to a peer review process. An individual's rank can be verified even without membership on the part of themselves or their coach in any specific organization so long as there is supporting evidence that stands up to the scrutiny of review by the community.

First of all, make sure you have a well completed and documented profile. Add as much information and photos as you can. As the site matures and the user base grows, verification will be quicker, given that there is a better chance people you know are already verified here. Meanwhile, help build the user base by inviting people you know to join. Another proven way of attracting attention to your profile is to be active in the forums. Verified users will often vote for strangers with well documented profiles. Statistically, all well documented profiles on the site has eventually been verified.

By design, the verification process takes time and "work". It is based purely votes from people in the community who trust you to have provided the correct information on your profile. If there is not enough people registered on the site that can vouch for your legitimacy, then you can not be verified yet.

This is up to you! Organically, many different standards for verification will evolve as the site grows, and this is completely fine. At the end of the day, the combined vote of the entire community will ultimately decide on verification or dispute. The actual voting criteria will become an average of all criteria from the entire community.

Yes, verified profiles can both vote to verify and dispute. Disputed votes will deduct points. Any profile with a negative voting point score will be marked as disputed.

From experience since the launch of this service in January 2020, this simply does not happen. The main theory why this works so well is it's because there are no such things as anonymous profiles. Everyone must have their actual face and name on their profile before they can cast a vote. People just act differently when they're not anonymous. Also, if someone is downvoted unfairly, the rest of the community can equally upvote and easily keep your profile verified. One vote alone holds very little weight; verification/dispute happens through a general voice of multiple members of the community. And at the end of the day, if someone receives votes or comments they do not like, they can always just decide to delete their profile again.

No. The votes are for the profile and promotion history in it's entirety. Make sure to enter all your belts in your promotion history from the beginning, so people vote for your most recent rank.

No. Aquiring rank verification with IBJJF only requires the approval of one black belt to sign off for you. Beltchecker.com requires several verified profiles from the community to verify your profile, so a single person approving your belt rank is not enough.

It will never be possible to verify a fake profile since thorough ID verification is required. And even then, if the community get suspicious, they can downvote the profile and it will quickly get status as disputed.

This is technically possible. Remember, there are no set rules for what is acceptable behavior here, it is all up to the community to judge. If someone, for instance, starts offering votes for money and the community disagree on this behavior, it has the power to quickly downvote this person and strip him/her from their voting power. Did the person manage to cast any votes while verified, all of these will be instantly will instantly be cancelled, the moment verification status is lost. A profile's voting power can only be sustained through continous trust from the community.

A single person's vote does not carry enough weight to make a difference in someone's verification. For black belt, it takes around 10 other black belts to verify the belt rank. So if someone unfairly downvotes a profile, the community can equally upvote and balance out the final vote. A "voting-war" between groups could break out, and it would ultimately be up to the average of the votes to let the system decide the result.

Beltchecker is deliberately self-moderating, and some members check thoroughly. Administrators and moderators enforce the forum rules — such as "be nice" — but they do not decide how much scrutiny is allowed or intervene in how members vote. The moment we start ruling on how hard someone may check, verification stops being community-driven and becomes our opinion instead, which defeats the entire purpose of the site. A dispute is not an admin ruling, and it is not permanent. A single member is only one voice: for a black belt it takes roughly ten other black belts to carry verification, so nobody can decide your status alone. If the community believes someone is acting in bad faith, it can downvote them, strip their voting power, and remove every vote they ever cast at the same moment. And if a member's activity is genuinely bothering you, the most reliable fix is on your side — making your profile ineligible for votes removes their ability to vote on it at all (see below), without us having to referee a disagreement between two members.

This trips a lot of people up, but the burden of proof sits with the person making the claim — the same way it does with IBJJF or any other verification body. A made-up lineage usually cannot be disproven from the outside, so asking a voter to prove a negative would make the system easier to game, not fairer. A dispute is really just a member saying the evidence in front of them is not yet enough to confirm your rank. You resolve it by adding what is missing: promotion photos, a certificate, or a lineage that can be traced through public sources. You are never required to, but the more verifiable your profile, the more of the community will stand behind it.

Almost never. In practice a downvote here is about documentation, not skill or character — longtime members will tell you that disputes are, in nearly every case, about a gap in the evidence on a profile rather than a judgement of anyone's actual Jiu Jitsu. The upside is that a documentation gap is fixable in a way that an opinion about your skill never would be: add the missing piece and the vote can change. And if you moved gyms a lot, or your old gym never did certificates or promotion photos, that is not held against you — nobody expects a full paper trail for a sport that has been informal for most of its history. Add whatever you genuinely have: early belt photos, training or competition footage, social media posts from your instructor, an instructor who is on the site and can confirm you, or a public list of an academy's belts. Time in the art shown across your earlier belts often carries more weight than a perfect record for one specific promotion.

A profile only becomes open to votes once three things are in place: your verified name, a verified profile photo, and a complete promotion history. Leave any one of them out and your profile cannot receive votes at all, while you keep the forums, training log, and every other feature. So there is no separate switch to flip. If you want to stay out of the voting side of the site, simply leave your name or profile photo unverified, or leave a promotion out of your history (for example your white belt). Any one of those keeps you unvoteable and you lose nothing else. It also means you never have to out-vote a particular member you would rather not deal with — making your profile ineligible removes the issue entirely.

Members set their own voting criteria, and a few do weigh lineage or character. Most, though, separate the belt from the person, using the simple standard of whether you were awarded the rank and whether whoever awarded it was qualified to do so. There is no site-wide rule forcing anyone to vote purely on documentation, just as there is none forcing you to keep your profile eligible for votes. If you believe a vote is about association rather than evidence, the response is the same as always: the community can balance it, you can add evidence that speaks for itself, or you can make your profile ineligible for votes.

Yes, and this is where the line sits. Votes and disputes are part of the community system and we do not touch them in either direction. Comment text is different: if a comment breaks the forum rules or makes serious personal allegations, send us a formal request identifying the specific comment and we will review the text for removal. To be clear, that applies to the words, not to the underlying vote.

There is no neutral button, and that is on purpose — it raises more problems than it solves (should the mark be public or private, how does the owner clear it, what happens when the person who flagged it forgets about it, and so on). If you would like more information on a profile without putting a mark on someone's verification, use a private message or a public wall message instead. Those let you explain exactly what you mean and keep the conversation open, and unlike a lingering flag, a dispute already disappears on its own the moment the profile is updated.

No. Every profile is disputable in exactly the same way, including our own. The founder's own black belt degree is listed as "time served" and can be disputed, or have its votes withdrawn, by the community at any time — just like anyone else's. No verification here is permanent or protected, no matter whose profile it is.

Two things help. First, reacting publicly tends to draw more scrutiny, not less — on a site literally called Beltchecker, loudly objecting to being checked is the fastest way to make people curious, whereas quietly adding evidence, or simply not engaging, defuses it far better than arguing does. Second, you control your own exposure: you can make your profile ineligible for votes, or deactivate it entirely under Edit Profile, which takes effect immediately and needs nobody's approval. It is also worth remembering that the system runs both ways — the same community that checks belts also vouches for and supports legitimate ones, which is the part most people are here for.

No, you can use the full website without verification. The only thing that will be disabled for you is casting votes yourself.

In order to get the voting system working, a small, trusted and vetted group of black belts have had their ranks pre-verified so they could start voting. If we did not do this, no one could ever start verifying each other. It is not possible to apply for pre-verification of rank.

The system allows certification of degrees for verified black belts once due time is served and as long as the community agrees by voting to approve it. Compare here the requirements from Beltchecker.com with those of IBJJF:

• White belt0 points
• Gray belt50 points
• Yellow belt50 points
• Orange belt50 points
• Green belt50 points
• Blue belt200 points
• Purple belt400 points
• Brown belt700 points
• Black belt1000 points
• Black belt 1st degree1000 points
• Black belt 2nd degree1000 points
• Black belt 3rd degree1000 points
• Black belt 4th degree1000 points
• Black belt 5th degree1000 points
• Black belt 6th degree1000 points
• Red and black belt 7th degree1000 points
• Red and white belt 8th degree1000 points
• Red belt 9th degree1000 points
• Red belt 10th degree1000 points

Once verified, your votes will give the following points:

• White belt0 points
• Gray belt0 points
• Yellow belt0 points
• Orange belt0 points
• Green belt0 points
• Blue belt5 points
• Purple belt20 points
• Brown belt50 points
• Black belt100 points
• Black belt 1st degree125 points
• Black belt 2nd degree150 points
• Black belt 3rd degree175 points
• Black belt 4th degree200 points
• Black belt 5th degree225 points
• Black belt 6th degree250 points
• Red and black belt 7th degree275 points
• Red and white belt 8th degree300 points
• Red belt 9th degree325 points
• Red belt 10th degree350 points

Requirements to claim an academy profile are:

- A fully verified profile
- Minimum three members of your academy that are fully verified, minimum rank of blue belt and confirmed as your students*

To claim your academy profile, click the academy name on your own profile and follow the instructions.

*) For your students to add you as a coach, they must go to 'Edit profile' -> 'Coaches, students & academies'

After you've activated your academy profile, go to 'Manage academy' to approve members and coaches of it.

Yes. While you can only be a member of one academy, there is no limit to how many you can be coach and administrator of.

Just ask them to change the name of the academy in their profiles so that it's spelled in the same way. Then you'll automatically all be registered under the correct academy.

Please contact us on [email protected]

There are several different standards in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for who can promote who and we don't endorse any specific of them. On Beltchecker.com the vote of the community is the only judge of legitimacy.

This site allows community verification of information on practitioner profiles, including their ranks. It gives the power of validation to the community. The moderators or administrators have - by design - no more power to vote than any other user of the site. This means that the average vote of the entire community decides if a belt promotion is verified or not. In THEORY, the community could come together and agree to promote someone. This would require a majority of the higher ranked users to agree to validate the new belt rank. If this will ever happen or not, we can not predict nor control, it will be up to the community.

This website is completely free to use and no features require payment to use. It is built, and paid for, by volunteer martial arts enthusiasts in their free time. Certificates and ID cards are one way for us to generate a little revenue from the site to help us pay for server and development costs. Our profit per item sold is approximately USD$10, which goes towards our monthly expenses of currently USD$536.

No, absolutely not. Get it only if you think it could be a fun thing to own and want to help us pay the bills to run the site.

Click here to order

A fully verified profile is required to order.

You will receive a notification here on Beltchecker once your order has shipped. We ship with regular postal service (as worldwide, tracked shipping would be really expensive for such small items), so we do not have any tracking information once it has shipped.

Please note that delivery time can be a bit long—for certificates in particular—due to manual profile review, printing and shipping (especially during pandemic). Since we produce the certificates at a professional printer, we have to make them in batches as it would be too expensive to order single prints every time. This also adds to the processing time a bit.

Certificates ship from Denmark and ID cards ship from the US.

Feel free to contact [email protected] for questions on your ID card or certificate order. We will be happy to re-send anything that might have gotten lost in the mail :)

We are always looking to involve more volunteer developers and translators. If you're interested in being part of the project send us an email on [email protected].

All donations are welcome. Click here.

Try asking in the 'Help & technical support' forum or send us an email on [email protected].

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