Ways for temporary residence to lead to permanent?

Correction: I may have misunderstood the rules.

Ultimately, I am looking into paths to citizenship, and hoping my temporary residency helps me get there. Upon looking into it a bit, it seems citizenship requires 4 years of permanent residency. I had always assumed three years total, in country, (no matter how you're doing it as long as it's legal) made one eligible for permanent residency, and with a fourth year, citizenship. From what I'm reading online, I'm mistaken.

But my initial question remains: are there paths from temporary to permanent residency that don't include marriage?

04/22/23 Ultimately, I am looking into paths to citizenship, and hoping my temporary residency helps me get there. Upon looking into it a bit, it seems citizenship requires 4 years of permanent residency. I had always assumed three years total, in country, (no matter how you're doing it as long as it's legal) made one eligible for permanent residency, and with a fourth year, citizenship. From what I'm reading online, I'm mistaken.

But my initial question remains: are there paths from temporary to permanent residency that don't include marriage?
-@acpr

Real "permanent residency" for foreigners doesn't legally exist under the 2017 law (except for those who had already received it under the previous law), but as long as the PF are willing to renew a CRNM it effectively does, and once people pass 60 years of age, then they should received CRNMs good for nine years that show "INDETERMINADA" on the "Validity" line. It's pretty clear that this will happen for people who are here on the bases of Refugee or Stateless Condition, Family Unification, Investment, Religious Work, Labor Contract, and, under certain cases, Education. Whether it will for people here on the basis of "Immigration Policy" rather than law, i.e., Retirees and Digital Nomads, is still unclear, but should start becoming clearer now that people are reaching the end of their original stay and starting to renew.

Whether or not a person satisfies the time requirement for naturalization is generally calculated from the issue date of their CRNM, so when you renew you'll get your first signal. If your new CRNM continues to show the original issue date, that's a sign that you're building up time that counts against the four year requirement. If, on the other hand, If you get a brand new CRNM with a new issue date, that suggests that you're getting a series of one-year temporary authorizations for residency.

Aside from marriage, the other forms of Family Unification that can move a Digital Nomad to that track are to be in a União Estável (effectively a civil union) with a Brazilian for at least one year, or to be the parent of a Brazilian child. With marriage, União Estável, or parenthood, the residency period for naturalization is reduced from four years to one year after the qualifying event.