A little analysis of the Steem economy

Hello, I invite you to the world of numbers.

Some of you may know that I love statistics. It allows you to see a more general picture. Lately, especially due to a job change, I've been short on time and can't be as active on Steemit as I used to be. However, I try to follow everything and when I had a free moment, I decided to devote it to some research.

After the recent rise in the price of STEEM, most are feeling euphoric. There are talks about wealth and a cloudless future. But my post, while it's about the Steem economy, has nothing to do with that.

Among his many tools, @justyy lists the top 3,000 richest accounts. I thought this was a good sample for a little analysis of the Steem economy. I have been working on this list for a few days and I want to share the results.

Sample

As I mentioned, the sample consists of 3,000 accounts. If we consider the Current Supply value found on steemworld.org as the amount of all STEEM printed, then:

• The share of all STEEM of this sample is 66.59 %
• The share of all SBD of this sample is 95.10%
• Total PowerDown - 0.93%
• The number of accounts currently doing PowerDown is 241 out of 3000.

The structure of the economy

If in real life the structure of the economy depends on each enterprise, then in the STEEM ecosystem it depends on the activity of each account. I had to analyze three thousand accounts to get an overall picture.

I have divided the accounts into categories, which I will talk about below. In general, the distribution of resources is as follows.

By Effective SP:

By liquid STEEM

By SBD

Hodlers

I was surprised that among the richest accounts there are many that do not show any activity. I called them hodlers. It is likely that some of these accounts will no longer show signs of life due to the loss of access keys or the death of the owner.

In total, I counted 371 such accounts. Hodlers hold 9.37% of all STEEM and 2.14% of all SBD. These accounts do not harm the economy, quite the opposite, as they prevent the sale of large amounts of STEEM/SBD. At least for now.

Exchanges

I was able to identify 22 accounts belonging to exchanges. They hold 52% of all STEEM and 55.7% of all SBD.

I think it is good for any cryptocurrency if it is traded on as many exchanges as possible. However, in the case of STEEM/SBD, cryptocurrency exchanges own too much of a stake🤔 .

Bots

In this category, I included all accounts that provide paid voting services. I found 46 of them. In total, bots own 13.8% of all STEEM and 0% of SBD. "Total STEEM" includes both the own STEEM of these accounts and the STEEM delegated to them.

I've said more than once that in my opinion voting services harm the STEEM economy, because they motivate to write every day, while guaranteeing fixed rewards. This does not motivate the creation of quality content. The meaning of writing something interesting is lost, the sense of curation is lost, the social aspect, which is the basis of this blockchain, is lost.

Milking rewards

I came across 14 accounts whose activities cannot be called anything other than reward milking. They vote for the same authors every day, although it is difficult to call the posts worth it. These accounts hold 0.7% of all STEEM and 0% of SBD. They certainly do not benefit the STEEM ecosystem, but the magnitude of the damage should not be overstated.

Manual curation

1,658 out of 3,000 accounts are engaged in manual curation. Most of them also publish posts and comments. That is, more than half of Steem users behave organically, looking for social interaction. I was amused by these data. 🙂

Self support

887 accounts are engaged in self-support, that is, they have delegated the absolute majority of their SP to voting services. Such accounts publish a lot of low-quality posts and do not vote for other authors.

It should be noted that there are exceptions here. Several accounts have delegated some of their SP and continue to interact with the community. But you can count them on the fingers of one hand.

steem.dao

steem.dao owns 35.28% of all SBD. Is it good or bad? I guess it's a good thing this SBD wasn't sold 😄.

A few conclusions

It was a pleasant surprise for me that 46% of effective SP is involved in manual curation. It seems that our affairs are not so bad. Of course, the main credit here goes to the Steemit team with its large share, but there are other manual curators and this is encouraging.

I was also surprised by the large number of hodlers and the amounts in their accounts. I suspect that a significant number of them appeared as a result of the great split.

And finally, if you add effective SP and liquid STEEM, the structure of the Seeem economy will be as follows:

So is the Steem economy healthy or sick? 🤔😃