SP distribution by account sizes

in #investmentlast month (edited)

Yesterday, I posted A more granular look at Steem's account classifications with a breakdown of accounts by the amount of staked STEEM.

Today, I was curious about how much actual SP is held by each class of accounts, so I downloaded the actual balances of all accounts and slapped together a PowerBI report. Here's what I found:

  • The top row is the number of accounts by account type, and it basically matches what I got from SDS yesterday.
    • I broke it into two charts since minnows and above are invisible if they're all in the same chart.
    • "redfish" are repeated in both charts to try to anchor the perspective a little bit.
  • The second row is the amount of STEEM, SP, and SBD held by account type.
    • I didn't see a need to split this into two charts.
    • I used estimated SP instead of VESTS so that it could be visually compared against the liquid STEEM values.

And here's the script I used to do the download

#!/bin/bash
STEEM_API="https://api.steemit.com"

DATE=$(date)
echo "account,STEEM,SBD,VESTS" > /tmp/allBalances.csv
curl -s --data \
   '{"jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"database_api.list_accounts", "params": {"start":"", "limit":1000, "order":"by_name"}, "id":1}' ${STEEM_API} \
   | jq -Src ".result[][] | [.name, .balance.amount, .sbd_balance.amount,  .vesting_shares.amount] | @csv" | sed 's/\"//g' | tee -a /tmp/allBalances.csv

saveLastAccount="xyzzy"
count=1
while :
do
   DATE=$(date)
   lastAccount=$(tail -1 /tmp/allBalances.csv | sed 's/,.*//g')
   echo ${DATE}/${count}: ${saveLastAccount} ${lastAccount}
   if [ "${saveLastAccount}x" == "${lastAccount}x" ]
   then
      break
   fi
   curl -s --data \
      '{"jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"database_api.list_accounts", "params": {"start":"'${lastAccount}'", "limit":1000, "order":"by_name"}, "id":1}' ${STEEM_API} \
      | jq -Src ".result[][] | [.name, .balance.amount, .sbd_balance.amount,  .vesting_shares.amount] | @csv" | sed 's/\"//g' | tee -a /tmp/allBalances.csv
   saveLastAccount=${lastAccount}
   count=$(( ${count} + 1 ))
done

Some not-very-surprising observations

  • 4 blue whales have more combined SP/VESTS than 29 whales
  • So do 291 Orcas
  • I divided nanoplankton into sub-classes based on holdings, but I don't know whether there's any point in establishing new names for those subclasses.
  • Converting from the blockchain's numbers to human readable numbers is a real chore😉.
  • Almost all SBDs are probably held by the SPS and by the exchanges.
  • Dolphins and above hold very little liquid STEEM or SBDs.

Just for fun, here's another visual with the overall distribution of STEEM vs. SP. These numbers are broadly consistent with what I'm seeing in other reports.

Update: Here are the same visualizations redone with SBDs converted to the equivalent amount of STEEM debt:

Holdings by account size

SP, STEEM, and collateralized STEEM (SBDs)

Caveat Lector (reader beware)

  • It's always possible that there are errors in these visuals or in the download script, so be appropriately skeptical.

Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".




Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.


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Are some of the plankton and redfish in the bottom chart exchanges? I'm kind of surprised there would be so much liquid Steem held by small regular accounts. Or maybe it's just because there's so many of them?

Yeah, I hadn't looked at details but I was assuming it was on the exchanges. A quick look confirms that a handful of exchanges account for most of it.

image.png

That raises a topic that was discussed years ago. The conversation vanished with the Witness Wars, but I wonder if someone could get some exchanges to start offering staking services. JS was big on that topic right after the acquisition...

Update: Same with SBDs

image.png

I wonder if someone could get some exchanges to start offering staking services.

It would probably be a big accounting headache to match individual staked amounts on the exchange to the amount powered up/down by the exchange account. They would probably also have a hard time tracking and reporting the "staking rewards" to distribute to individual accounts.

Yeah, it would be a pain to code, but not insurmountable, I guess. Coinbase does it with Ethereum and other tokens.

I'm not actually sure if it would be good for STEEM, though. I am pretty sure that it would drive down the interest rate (which is small to begin with). Not sure if it would impact curation rewards.

Yeah, it would be a pain to code, but not insurmountable, I guess.

I agree that it's likely possible, but I doubt an exchange would want to do a lot of custom coding support for Steem, especially since there isn't easy API support for it.

Coinbase does it with Ethereum and other tokens.

I'm not sure how other chains do things, but I suspect their staking rewards are tied to particular transactions on the chains rather than the vests/SP thing that Steem does, so they look more like discrete transfers that can be credited to individual accounts on the exchange.

Not sure if it would impact curation rewards.

I think it would only do that if the exchange accounts voted, the rewards distribution is based on actual votes recorded on posts, not possible voting power.

I think it would only do that if the exchange accounts voted, the rewards distribution is based on actual votes recorded on posts, not possible voting power.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking...

I'm not sure who that dunamo exchange is, but with 190 million STEEM, they could maybe collect some nice fees with a staking service. Might be worth the effort. No idea, but that's a lot of STEEM.

Well, Dunamu is a company name. It operates Upbit, the cryptocurrency exchange with the largest market share in South Korea.
Hope this help. :)

Upvoted. Thank You for sending some of your rewards to @null. It will make Steem stronger.