The @steemit account is the largest single user account on the Steem blockchain with, until recently, over 70 million held as Steem Power. Two weeks ago this account started a power down, a process by which the Steem Power is converted to Liquid Steem over a period of 3 months. The first instalment of this power down was received one week ago.
In this study:
- I examine this recent power down through analysis of the related transfers, power ups, and delegations with the aim of illustrating where the money released has flowed to;
- I look further back into the use of funds from the @steemit account to draw up the full picture over a longer time period - as far back as the start of November 2017; and
- I then draw interpretations from the longer time period to determine whether this recent power down is likely to be a positive or a negative event for the Steem blockchain.
0 Summary of Findings
I start by presenting a high level summary of findings, extracted from the full analysis, for readers who have limited available time. The full details of the analysis are included in the later sections of this article.
This first diagram charts the flow of money from the @steemit account since 9 January 2018:
- All amounts shown are in thousands of Steem (so 5871k is 5.87 million Steem).
- Internal transfers are yellow, power-ups green, delegations blue and transfers to exchanges purple.
The @steemit account is powering down a 71.5m holding of Steem Power. The first instalment of 5.5m was released six days ago on 16 January and was transferred to the @steemit2 account (an additional 0.37m Steem was transferred a few days earlier).
3.5m of the 5.5m was powered up into Steem Power for the @misterdelegation account. This account has then made some very significant delegations to a number of the teams developing applications on the Steem blockchain: @dlive, @dmania, @dsound, and @busy.pay as well as a smaller delegation to the spam abuse team @spaminator.
1m of the 5.5m was passed to account @alpha and this amount appears to be slowly finding its way to the exchanges @bittrex, @poloniex and @blocktrades.
0.5m of the 5.5m was powered up into Steem Power for the account @steem which provides the delegation necessary to give new accounts power and bandwidth.
The remaining 0.5m remains held as Liquid Steem in the holdings of the @steemit2 account.
(It should be noted that the above analysis only shows the direction and amounts of flows on money. Since the @steemit2 account and @misterdelegation accounts already possessed smaller, yet significant, holding of Steem, it is not possible to conclude exactly which Steem were passed and which were retained by the accounts).
This second diagram charts the flow of money over a longer period, since 1 November 2017, including the transactions for the power down illustrated above:
- All amounts shown are in thousands of Steem (so 11871k is 11.87 million Steem).
- Internal transfers are yellow, power-ups green, delegations blue and transfers to exchanges purple.
The overall pattern is not dissimilar.
The total delegations made since the start of November through @misterdelegation were 6.5m with 2.5m already made prior to the power down. These included 1m for each of @utopian-io and @dtube.
There total amount powered up into Steem Power for the account @steem was over 2m with 1.5m made prior to the power down.
A total of 2.9m was passed to exchanges through the account @alpha with a further 0.6m powered up into Steem Power for the account @blocktrades.
There was a huge transfer to the account @tostitos, a large proportion of which made its way to the exchange Bittrex. I have no further details on this account.
There were other small transfers, for example 50k to Utopian to assist with on boarding of new accounts.
(Again, it cannot be concluded that the 50k passed to Utopian was powered up or transferred. This analysis simply shows the direction of the flows of money).
Conclusions
The delegations made to Utopian at the start of November and to DTube at the start of December have been useful in helping to promote these platforms, both of which are now becoming very significant assets for the steem blockchain. The recent delegations to dlive, dmania, and dsound should, in my view, be considered in the same light: as an excellent investment in the future of the blockchain. Using 64% of the released funds in this manner should have a positive impact in helping the steem blockchain become the centre of decentralised content production.
The use of 9% of the funds to support the @steem account and the on-boarding of new accounts also seems a necessity and a positive impact for the growing blockchain.
The transfer of 18% of first tranche of released funds in the direction of the exchanges does not feel like a positive event, but neither is it clearly negative since it is unclear to what purpose the funds will be put. There will be a need for advertising and external funds once the SMT package is delivered. Without greater knowledge of the use of these funds any conclusion drawn here is in the realm of speculation.
As a final conclusion it would be interesting to understand how the other eleven payments are to be used if the power down is to continue. The above approach does not scale, since there are currently not enough platforms to support with such large delegations, and flooding the exchanges with large amounts of Steem on a weekly basis is likely to depress the Steem price.
As a final point, if you’re reading @ned, I’d be happy to accept some delegation from the next payment!!
Outline
- Summary of Findings and Conclusions (see above)
- Scope of Analysis
- Tools Used
- Examination of the recent power down of the @steemit account
- Examination of money flows over a longer period
- Impact of recent delegations to Utopian and Dtube
- Scripts
1 Scope of Analysis
The analysis is based on the data for the @steemit account and other accounts that have received a flow of money from the recent power down. The data has been obtained through SQL queries of SteemSQL, a publicly available Microsoft SQL database containing all the Steem blockchain data.
Data on transfers and power ups was taken from the TxTransfers table. Data on delegations was obtained from the TxDelegateVestingShares table.
The data has been separated from the overall Steem blockchain data by use of an iterative process through which each recipient of funds was added to a list of accounts to be queried. This process continued until the terminal point for each flow was reached.
The first part of the analysis includes data on transfers, power ups and delegations from 9 January onwards. The second part of the analysis uses data from 1 November onwards. The data has been filtered by date using the timestamps in the respective tables.
2 Tools Used
Valentina Studio, a free data management tool, was used to run the SQL queries. The raw data was then verified and analysed in the spreadsheet application of the LibreOffice office suite.
Graphs and charts were produced using Numbers, the Mac spreadsheet tool, or using RAWGraphs, an open source data visualisation framework.
SQL scripts are included at the end of this analysis.
3 Examination of the recent power down of the @steemit account
Section included in Summary of Findings:
This first diagram charts the flow of money from the @steemit account since 9 January 2018:
- All amounts shown are in thousands of Steem (so 5871k is 5.87 million Steem).
- Internal transfers are yellow, power-ups green, delegations blue and transfers to exchanges purple
The @steemit account is powering down a 71.5m holding of Steem Power. The first instalment of 5.5m was released six days ago on 16 January and was transferred to the @steemit2 account (an additional 0.37m Steem was transferred a few days earlier).
3.5m of the 5.5m was powered up into Steem Power for the @misterdelegation account. This account has then made some very significant delegations to a number of the teams developing applications on the Steem blockchain: @dlive, @dmania, @dsound, and @busy.pay as well as a smaller delegation to the spam abuse team @spaminator.
1m of the 5.5m was passed to account @alpha and this amount appears to be slowly finding its way to the exchanges @bittrex, @poloniex and @blocktrades.
0.5m of the 5.5m was powered up into Steem Power for the account @steem which provides the delegation necessary to give new accounts power and bandwidth.
The remaining 0.5m remains held as Liquid Steem in the holdings of the @steemit2 account.
(It should be noted that the above analysis only shows the direction and amounts of flows on money. Since the @steemit2 account and @misterdelegation accounts already possessed smaller, yet significant, holding of Steem, it is not possible to conclude exactly which Steem were passed and which were retained by the accounts).
Additional points of note:
One transfer of 600k Steem was made to @alpha within the last 24 hours, which may explain the discrepancy between the amount transferred to @alpha and the amounts transferred to the exchanges.
The @misterdelegation account already holds some funds which explains the discrepancy between the 3.5m of power-up and the 4m of delegation.
Examination of money flows over a longer period
Section included in Summary of Findings:
This second diagram charts the flow of money over a longer period, since 1 November 2017, including the transactions for the power down illustrated above:
- All amounts shown are in thousands of Steem (so 11871k is 11.87 million Steem).
- Internal transfers are yellow, power-ups green, delegations blue and transfers to exchanges purple.
The overall pattern is not dissimilar.
The total delegations made since the start of November through @misterdelegation were 6.5m with 2.5m already made prior to the power down. These included 1m for each of @utopian-io and @dtube.
There total amount powered up into Steem Power for the account @steem was over 2m with 1.5m made prior to the power down.
A total of 2.9m was passed to exchanges through the account @alpha with a further 0.6m powered up into Steem Power for the account @blocktrades.
There was a huge transfer to the account @tostitos, a large proportion of which made its way to the exchange Bittrex. I have no further details on this account.
There were other small transfers, for example 50k to Utopian to assist with on boarding of new accounts.
(Again, it cannot be concluded that the 50k passed to Utopian was powered up or transferred. This analysis simply shows the direction of the flows of money).
Additional points of note:
Some of the transfers to the @eeqj account passed through other accounts before ending up at eeqj. I have aggregated these transfers for the benefit of clarity.
The total delegations made by @misterdelegation (6.5m) exceed the amount powered up (3.5m). This will be due to funds passed to @misterdelegation prior to the start of November or obtained other than from the @steemit and @steemit2 accounts.
5 Impact of recent delegations to Utopian and Dtube
It is impossible to separate the impact of the 1m Steem Power delegations from @misterdelegation to Utopian and Dtube from all the other variables and all the hard work that has contributed to the success of these platforms.
In particular it should be noted that Utopian has received many delegations, including those from @freedom and @ned which were of a similar size of larger than that from @misterdelegation. It is also important to note in the Dtube chart that the Steem price rose rapidly over December, causing an influx of interest in the steem blockchain in general.
All we can show is how both platforms have prospered after receiving the delegations, both at a faster pace than the overall Steem blockchain metrics.
For Dtube (seen above in the six month view) there was a clear and rapid rise in the number of videos, uploaders and payouts after the delegation was made.
As noted above it is difficult to separate the delegation element from the rising steem price or the significant improvements in the platform that were made around the same time. However the recent success of the platform is clear both in the chart above and from the trending page on steemit.
For Utopian (seen above in the three month view) the largest delegations, which totalled in excess of 3 million Steem Power, were all received around the end of October and the start of November. The above red line shows the date of that received from @misterdelegation.
Again it is difficult to separate the delegations element from all other variables, but the rapid rise of the platform is clear to see in the chart and also evident from any visit to steemit.
6 Scripts
This was the script used to extract the transfers and power ups for the first two parts of the analysis; the examination of the recent power down and the longer period of study.
The list of account names was determined by use of an iterative process through which each recipient of funds was added to a list of accounts to be queried. This process continued until the terminal point for each flow was reached.
Not all of the accounts appear in the final summary. Some of the transfers were small, while others passed through a short chain of accounts and were summarised together for clarity.
SELECT
TxTransfers.id,
TxTransfers.type,
TxTransfers.[FROM],
TxTransfers.[TO],
max(Convert(decimal(20,3), TxTransfers.amount)) as [Amount],
TxTransfers.amount_symbol,
TxTransfers.memo,
TxTransfers.timestamp,
max(COnvert(date, TxTransfers.timestamp)) as [Date],
max(COnvert(date, TxTransfers.timestamp)) as [Time]
FROM
TxTransfers (NOLOCK)
WHERE
TxTransfers.[FROM] IN
('steemit',
'steemit2',
'alpha',
'busy.pay',
'c75c39f25a90',
'c91c2dfbf2f5',
'fdcb934e6cce',
'misterdelegation',
'steem',
'tostitos',
'utopian-io',
'eeqj'
) AND
Convert(date, TxTransfers.timestamp) >= '2017-11-01'
GROUP BY
TxTransfers.id,
TxTransfers.type,
TxTransfers.[FROM],
TxTransfers.[TO],
TxTransfers.amount_symbol,
TxTransfers.memo,
TxTransfers.timestamp
ORDER BY
TxTransfers.timestamp
A similar but simpler simpler script was used to obtain the delegations. The query used the same WHERE clause as the query above and referenced the TxDelegateVestingShares table rather than the TxTransfers table. No grouping or ordering was necessary in this second query.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading!
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
This all highlights the number one downside to the Steem blockchain, platform, and cryptocurrency - It's not really decentralized.
SteemIt, Inc effectively controls the platform by virtue of holding such a large amount of the currency. They can easily control all of the top witness spots and therefore literally do whatever they want if they wanted to.
From that perspective, the power down can actually be a really good thing. What would make it an even better thing is if they were simply more transparent about what they are doing.
Which scenario would you be more ok with (you being anyone reading this, not just the author of this post):
That is a rhetorical question btw, you don't need to respond to this comment and actually answer it :-)
I think the single most important thing that can be done to increase the price of the STEEM token (which I assume is what we all want?) is for SteemIt, Inc to provide clear transparency into what they are doing and what they plan to do with their Steem holdings as well as a clear roadmap and timeline for platform development that they can commit to hitting.
By not doing that they are either hiding something - which is a huge red flag - or else creating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about their own platform!
Lastly, regarding the transfers to exchanges - I have no problem with that if they are simply open and transparent about it. This platform desperately needs marketing - unfortunately you can't buy much of that with STEEM right now, so maybe they're getting some USD for that. We desperately need more core developers, I would be ecstatic if they withdrew some STEEM to fiat currency to pay for that.
If the funds are being withdrawn to somehow benefit the platform, I think most everyone would be in support of that, and there's no reason not to be open and transparent about it. If the funds are being withdrawn for some other purpose...well, let's just hope that's not the case.
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You've hit the nail on the head with this comment. Do we know who controls the steemit account? I take it it's @Dan or @Ned?
I'm not going to speculate about why the power down happened, but you're right: some kind of advance notice would have been a good idea to stop FUD.
The lack of transparency is frustrating - it's another parallel steemit has with a typical African dictatorship circa the 1980s: besides the near-centralized control of the economy, the hideous levels of inequality, yet with decentralization at the 'village' level (with status largely going to a few local big-men), there's even a sort of civil war going on, sparked by a 'resource curse'.
Then again, you might just say 'that's anarcho-capitalism'!
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My thought about this is - if you were the owner / creator of STEEM and it's just two years old, will you allow to run it on the wild just as when it was born?
Will you immediately give away all this delegation/power to some stranger who has the most money or do you wait for time to see who is in it for the long term and delegate those power to them?
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Sorry, after I posted, this would have been more appropriate to put as a reply directly under @yabapmatt's.
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I'm sure he'll find it - I'm not in a position to second-guess the creators, it's on my list to dig around and find out more about their values. If I had created this platform, in fairness, I'd find it much more difficult to stand back and just let it run! It seems like an appropriate time to start delegating too.
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Truth be told, I'm also interested in finding out what their core values are.
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I think it's safe to say 'strongly libertarian' as a starting point!
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Lol. Good point. :D ok back to the post! :D Thanks @miniature-tiger and @yabapmatt for sparking this conversation :)
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Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.
Hey @miniature-tiger, that's an impressive work! It's interesting to see where the powered down Steem ends up, and especially for dtube the benefit is immediately visible. This alpha account towards the exchanges seems also to be used by several witnesses and other users, I'd really like to know what's behind that...
You can contact us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
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Thanks @crokkon. Very prompt!
That's a great point on the alpha account. I only checked where the steemit funds were flowing, I didn't look to see if other funds were following the same routes.
I guess it would be a case of working back iteratively from the end points to see where the other flows start. Another day, perhaps!
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Hey @crokkon, I just gave you a tip for your hard work on moderation. Upvote this comment to support the utopian moderators and increase your future rewards!
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I always thought 70 million was a lot to risk on one password.
I'm assuming the Power Down wont't go on for the full 13 weeks? Then again, anarcho-capitalism doesn't sell itself on guarantees of financial security for the masses, so who knows.
Hopefully you won't be too depressed to do this analysis 12 weeks later.
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I assume it will stop after a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see what is done with the funds from the next installment, whether it follows the same pattern or not.
If the Steem is used to support initiatives, I actually think that's really positive. The additional voting from the freed up SP will effectively reduces everyone's vote a little (probably no-one will notice) and that power is being put in the hands of people that are building things that improve the overall blockchain experience, and then passing to people who produce great content on those platforms. I think that makes sense.
If it starts heading out to the market instead then it's possible people lose faith and start powering down themselves. Rats and ships and all that. That would actually worry me a little.
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But a devaluation might encourage mass adoption, in fact it might be necessary!
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Actually it's not only one "password"! The @steemit account has 3 owner and 2 active keys, so there are at least 5 private keys out there that allow you to control those funds. One of the owner keys is also an owner key to @steemit2, which means
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Thanks for the info!
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That is some impressive sleuthing! I have no idea how you do it, but it is interesting stuff you have dug up.
We miss you in the zombie adventure game!
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Thank you @happyme! It's all a bit of a puzzle, working out how to get the info, which is something that just appeals to me.
I shall return to the zombies one day. I'll keep my baseball bat honed and ready!
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This is a deep analysis and you really took your time to gathered this. You are doing a great job.
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Thank you @funkylove!
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Thank you for information and report
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No problem!
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@ironwood check this out
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Hey @miniature-tiger I am @utopian-io. I have just upvoted you!
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Hey @miniature-tiger I am @utopian-io. I have just upvoted you!
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Community-Driven Witness!
I am the first and only Steem Community-Driven Witness. Participate on Discord. Lets GROW TOGETHER!
Up-vote this comment to grow my power and help Open Source contributions like this one. Want to chat? Join me on Discord https://discord.gg/Pc8HG9x
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