The Two Year Change In Steem Power (MVests)

Each month I do a report that shows the shift in Steem Power (MVest actually) based upon the daily reports put together by @arcange.

In that report, I put up the chart from the month I joined. It was a snapshot of how things stood on the first of that month (August 2017). Thus, we can see the change over the past two years.

Here is the MVest distribution on 8/1/2017.

This is what it looked like at the end of July.

Let us also show the account breakdown on those dates.

2017:

2019:

https://steempeak.com/statistics/@arcange/steemit-statistics-20170801-en

https://steempeak.com/statistics/@arcange/steem-statistics-20190801-en

So what just out at us?

To start, the raw numbers are vastly different. Every category grew the number of MVests except the Whales. Their total dropped by a significant amount. We also see the total number of accounts in each category growing while the Whales took a step back.

This resulted in a flattening out of the distribution curve as evidenced by looking at the two charts. The Whales still have an large portion of the total but we can visually see the growth of the other categories.

We can also see this reflected in the percentages.

Here was the breakdown on 8/1/2017.

The total MVests here is 336,932.

On a percentage basis:

Whales 75.44%
Orcas 14.86%
Dolphins 7.16%
Minnows 2.14%
Red Fish .01%
Inactive .40%

The 2019 numbers look like this.

The total MVests here is 394,011.

On a percentage basis:

Whales 52.71%
Orcas 22.57%
Dolphins 14.27%
Minnows 7.11%
Red Fish 3.54%

The raw and percentage numbers tell a large part of the story but combining the MVests with the accounts, we see how much things really changed.

In 2017, the Whales and Orcas has over 90% of all the MVests that were staked. This was made up of 268 accounts.

We saw that total drop to around 75% of the total stake in those two categories. The major difference is there are a lot more accounts, 374.

In August 2017, 268 accounts controlled about 90% of the MVests.
In August 2019, 374 accounts control about 75% of the MVests.

I also find this interesting:

2019 Dolphins > 2017 Orcas
2019 Minnows > 2017 Dolphins
2019 Red Fish > 2017 Minnows

The total MVests held today by these categories is larger than the next level up was in 2017.

It is impossible to know who holds these different accounts so we could see some of the Whales also being Orcas. This is a point many want to bring up in the monthly reports I put out.

My answer to that is we have no idea how many different accounts anyone in the cryptocurrency world hold. The Bitcoin Whales could also have 15 other wallets meaning they hold a much greater percentage than is presumed. The only way to solve this is to have across the board KYC so there is a name to each account.

The numbers here show a two year change. This is a remarkable difference. Of course, many will look at it and say how bad it is. I think it crucial to remember that Steem is only 3 years old. In the cryptocurrency world, Steem is quickly forming one of the better token distributions.

Here is Bitcoin, an ecosystem that is a decade old. Let us see how that distribution is going.

After a decade, .06% of the wallets control almost 62% of the Bitcoin. We also see .57% owns just shy of 87% of the total.

With Steem, after watching the numbers for over 18 months, I can say at least it is heading the proper direction. Weekly distribution of Steem means that tens of thousands of accounts are getting more SP. Over time, it is having an impact.

The only question, in my mind, is the pace of that change. Since we do not have an overwhelming growth rate in terms of accounts, the transformation is going slower than any of us would like.

However, the ability for people to join and get rewarded with tokens creates a much different system as compared to ones where people need to buy the token.

Unlike many tokens, the distribution on Steem is changing.

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