A more granular look at Steem's account classifications

in #steemtalklast month (edited)

In May, last year, I asked @steemchiller about an SDS query to break down the Steem accounts in a more granular fashion, basically drilling further into the "plankton" (below "redfish") category and the "whale" category.

He responded quickly with an update that let us query the API with our own boundaries, but I haven't yet integrated that change into any of my reporting. Today, I took a quick look at some one-off graphs.

I broke "plankton" into "plankton" and "nanoplankton", and I broke "whale" into "whale" and "blue whale".

Here's what I found.

First, the overall numbers:

Type (VESTS)NumberPercentRatioRunning PctMin SP
nanoplankton 0-10k1,728,72390.11%1190.11%0.00
plankton 10k-100k157,0038.18%698.29%5.89
redfish 100k-1m25,8461.35%599.64%58.85
minnows 1m-10m5,3570.28%499.92%588.53
dolphins 10m-100m1,2500.07%499.98%5,885.29
orcas 100m-1b2910.02%10100.00%58,852.90
whales 1b-10b290.00%7100.00%588,529.00
blue whales >10b40.00%-100.00%5,885,290.00
Total1,918,503----
STEEM/MV----588.529

Note: Ratio means the number of accounts in the current category divided by the number of accounts in the next category. i.e. 4 "blue whales" * 7 "ratio" gives ~28 "whales" (actual = 29). How many accounts are in this category for every account in the next one (roughly)?

And here are some summary charts:

All accounts by percentage

All accounts by raw numbers

Plankton and above by raw numbers

Redfish and above by raw numbers

Minnows and above (the top 0.36% of accounts)

Things that surprised me:

  1. We're now up to 4 "blue whales" - and only two of them are owned by Steemit (AFAIK). When I first mentioned the concept about 3 or 4 years ago, there was only 1 blue whale, and it was owned by Steemit.
  2. The cutoff for "minnow" is much closer now to 600 than it is to 500. We need a new "rule of thumb" - or, at least, I do.
  3. Minnow accounts and above are solidly in the "top 1%"

Food for thought: How do we get to 6,000 minnows?


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.


image.png

Pixabay license, source

Reminder


Visit the /promoted page and #burnsteem25 to support the inflation-fighters who are helping to enable decentralized regulation of Steem token supply growth.

Sort:  

"nanoplankton" 😆, nice one... ^^ Keep up the great work! Maybe I can add this in the getVestingStats method for the next SDS version, which will probably be released at the end of this month.

Food for thought: How do we get to 6,000 minnows?

Could be interesting to run some numbers relative to the reward pool / inflation rate, e.g. how hard would it be to get there via author rewards, what percent of vote rshares would need to target accounts of X size to grow their pool at various rates, etc.

I think we should gradually move towards increasing curator rewards and decreasing author rewards 🤷‍♂️. So we will reach a certain point when people will be more interested in developing their account.

I think the only way this would make sense is if you could upvote off-chain content. Currently a big problem with Steem is that it doesn't seem like a healthy ecosystem for creators, so not enough people are bringing good content here to get upvotes. Squeezing author rewards even more seems like it would make that problem worse, not better.

I have thought this for a while. In addition to encouraging small accounts to power-up, I think it might also do a lot to deemphasize the delegation bots, and (as we saw the previous shift from 25% to 50%) it might turn out to be better for organic authors, too - despite the nominal percentage reduction.

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

This post has been upvoted/supported by Team 5 via @philhughes. Our team supports content that adds to the community.

image.png