Blockchain Business Intelligence: eSteem 12 Months Trend & Distribution

Details

Use of a mobile application for posting offers additional convenience for authors who are always on the go. good-karma who created the app wrote a really detailed eSteem FAQ post a couple of days ago. The post gave a brief introduction to eSteem and Steemit, the benefits of using eSteem, a disclosure of the benefactor rewards for eSteeem, answers to security related queries, and means to contact the developer for feedback and suggestions.

With the development of other mobile frontend applications connected to the Steem Blockchain, I wanted to see the trend in posting share for one of the firsts mobile application for Steem; eSteem App.

Outline

This contribution will look at these data-points to show the trend in posting share for eSteem, as well as other user and payout related data when the app is used for posting in the Steem Blockchain.

• 12 Month Posting Share Distribution Trend Between Steemit, eSteem and Sum of All Other Apps
• 12 Month Payout Value Share Distribution Trend Between Steemit, eSteem and Sum of All Other Apps
• Payout Range Distribution When eSteem is Used for Posting (Using Pre-Determined Ranges)
• Average Payout Trend Per Post eSteem vs. All Other Apps
• eSteemApp's Benefactor Rewards (12 Months Trend)
• Top 25 Categories (By Payout Value) When eSteem is Used for Posting
• Top 25 Authors (By Payout Value) When eSteem is Used for Posting

Scope of Analysis

This analysis was built based on 12 months worth of data to build a trending view comparison between eSteem, Steemit, and the sum of all other frontend application for the Steem blockchain. The data was delimited to include data between the 1st of March year 2017 to the 28th February 2018. The data was extracted on the 12th of March 2018 at 12NN GMT.

Tools

I used arcange's Steem SQL Database in generating the data. I used the Comments Table for the posts, payout, author, category and (length of) body. I used the column parent_author to delimit the data to posts and exclude comments. I ran these query in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet:

Posts from All Apps

SELECT Count(body), Sum(total_payout_value), Sum(pending_payout_value)
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '

Posts from Steemit

SELECT Count(body), Sum(total_payout_value), Sum(pending_payout_value)
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '
AND json_metadata like '%app":"steemit%'

Posts from eSteem

SELECT Count(body), Sum(total_payout_value), Sum(pending_payout_value)
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '
AND json_metadata like '%app":"esteem%'

Average Length of Posts

SELECT AVG(LEN(body))
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '
AND json_metadata like '%app":"esteem%'

Top Authors

SELECT author, Count(body), Sum(total_payout_value), Sum(pending_payout_value)
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '
AND json_metadata like '%app":"esteem%'
GROUP By author

Top Category

SELECT category, Count(body), Sum(total_payout_value), Sum(pending_payout_value)
FROM Comments
WHERE created>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND created< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND parent_author=' '
AND json_metadata like '%app":"esteem%'
GROUP By category

Benefactor Rewards

SELECT *
FROM VOCommentBenefactorRewards
WHERE timestamp>= CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2017')
AND timestamp< CONVERT(datetime,'3/01/2018')
AND benefactor='esteemapp'

Results

I started this analysis speculating that because of the many other frontend applications developed that are available via mobile, the posting share of eSteem likely went down in recent times. While it is true that the new apps are taking their share in terms of distribution of posting activities, they are taking the share not for eSteem, but from Steemit.

Like what can be seen in this chart, the share of posts submitted via Steemit was averaging at 96% between March 2017 to May 2017, then the share of posts submitted via Steemit started declining until it ended February 2018 near 58% share.

Payout Range Distribution

Having done this chart multiple times for other analysis related to country specific tags, I can say that the amount of post getting $0 payout is very minimal when eSteem is used for posting. This may be because of the trail votes for active users. The vote is not huge, but it can be enough to keep new-signups from leaving the system in their early days.

Average Payout Trend Per Post eSteem vs. All Other Apps

While the chance of getting $0 payout using eSteem in posting is extremely low, at the average, the payout by post is lower than the system average. In another analysis I titled Does Size Matter?, I highlighted the correlation in length of posts and the average payout. In that analysis, I showed a chart showing decreasing payout as the number of characters used in a post decreases.

The average length of posts (excluding comment) in eSteem is relatively short at only 1026 characters (201 word if the average English word has 5.1 characters) compared to the average of all posts at 1685 characters (330 word if the average English word has 5.1 characters). It is understandably short-form contents that are likely to be typed using eSteem. I couldn't imagine sharing an analysis like this for example using eSteem.

eSteemApp's Benefactor Rewards (12 Months Trend)

The post from good-karma linked above disclosed a 10% benefactor reward that goes to the account esteemapp. While in the earlier chart we have seen that the highest share in payout for posts created in eSteem was between December 2017 to February 2018, this is not necessarily the case with the benefactor rewards.

The benefactor rewards is paid in vest, and is very dependent upon the price. To explain this, I created a table below to highlight why the benefactor rewards went down while the share in payout went up. To make this easier, the example below assumed that the author selected Power Up 100% as the payout option.

Post Payout	Price of Steem	Curation Rewards	Author Reward	Benefactor (SP)
$100	1	25	65	10
$300	4	18.75	48.75	7.5

In this table we would see that while the payout is 3 times higher, the benefactor reward is still less because the price of Steem is four times higher than when the payout was $100.

Top 25 Categories (By Payout Value) When eSteem is Used for Posting

I expected the categories to be mostly attributable to short-form contents since I find if tough typing an over 500 words content using a mobile phone. Some of the notable short-form related categories found in the top 25 are #photography, #colorchallenge, and #poetry. The category #esteem is at top 3, there are also country/language specific categories found; #kr and #Indonesia.

Top 25 Authors (By Payout Value) When eSteem is Used for Posting

The top most author in terms of payout on posts when eSteem is used for posting is the developer and top Steem witness good-karma. Next to him is a user with account name rymlen using SteemD I saw that he currently have 4,400++ (post+comment) and half of it is done using eSteem. He's also bee in Steem for over 20 months now.

By using this simple query, I saw that rymlen have 2200++ posts using eSteeem:

SELECT Count(body)
FROM Comments
WHERE author like 'rymlen'
AND json_metadata like '%app":"esteem%'

The third from the top was vaguely familiar, and I thought I've seen that account from one of my earlier analysis. In my India tag analysis, I mentioned that geetharao is firepower's dad.

Conclusion

Contrary to my earlier speculation, eSteem is continuously growing in terms of posting share despite the development of the many other mobile app. It also looks like there is a loyal user-base who are using the app quite consistently for their posting activities. The trail for users actively using eSteem certainly helps in building this kind of loyalty.

While at the average, the payout on posts submitted via eSteem is lower in comparison to the average of post payout of all other apps, the percentage of posts getting $0 payout using eSteem is very minimal. In this way the app is very attractive to use for new sign-ups.

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