Is everybody heading for the doors? The narrative and the truth.
There is a narrative currently doing the rounds. Lots of shrill voices predicting the end of steemit because everybody is leaving. The facts however just don’t support that narrative and those conclusions.
True… the steemit price is undergoing some bloodletting.
This is to be expected after the massive 2000% spike following the 4th of July euphoria and the redistribution of STEEM by major STEEM Power holders.
The baselines however indicate that a mature core of steemit users is developing and that the prophets of doom are simply frauds. Their prophesies have little to no basis in fact.
The blue line indicates users who visit the web site and leave immediately never to return. It is quite normal for this blue line to fluctuate wildly and is a good barometer of hype levels out there on the internet and in the media.
Every time there is some sort of hype it rapidly peaks only to fall right back down again shortly afterwards.
The red line is a baseline that measures returning or loyal users
We can see a slow downward trend over the last month, however this is not alarming. Just as with the price spike and subsequent bloodletting. The user spike was preceded by a number of spikes closely correlated with the hype phases indicated by the spikes in the blue lines.
What goes up rapidly is destined to come down as consolidation occurs.
The red line or loyal users have once again stabilized at 10 to 12 thousand users per day which is slightly higher than the pre-hype spikes about a month ago.
When we review the baselines by continent the facts become even clearer.
The massive hype spike was mainly limited to the Americas and so is the subsequent downtrend with only a slight disturbance in Europe.
Asia, Africa and Oceania remain very constant.
When we drill deeper into the data we see that the hype spike and subsequent downtrend was most prevalent in the USA and has stabilized at around 3000 visitors a day.
Europe shows that any slowdown has really been isolated to Northern Europe (red line)
I'm glad that we are able to work out the kinks with 12000 users per day and not 1M.
Indeed! There's quite a bit of vitrol and drama here occasionally. Do people forget we're still in Beta, and what the exact purposes of "beta" are? I think the big news of Steemit has nothing to do with the voting power or the current price, but that there's a cafe in Germany that accepts Steem for payment! THAT'S the big news (and my next article idea, hope nobody steals the idea before I get it posted!).
Hey thanks for the votes buds! Here's my article expounding on the above.
https://steemit.com/money/@ibringawareness/nevermind-voting-power-and-price-of-sbd-the-big-story-is-that-a-cafe-in-berlin-accepts-steem-as-payment
It makes sense that tons of people would sign up hoping for a quick payday. Around that time the front page had posts earning $10k+ so it looked awesome to people just discovering Steem. It was never going to last. The fact that new people came and stuck around is great though.
I personally believe Steemit is just getting started. The developer community is huge and new apps are being built every day. Pretty awesome to be able to be in early and watch this thing grow.
Some of the doomsday posting may be because it tends to attract upvotes. Glad the stats tell a different story :)
Exactly.
I don't think anyone is heading for the doors - not yet. They're waiting to see how the changes in voting tomorrow play out.
Also - there isn't really any alternative for those who like cryptocurrency but don't want to mine or trade. I think synero will be dead in the water, their model relies on tipping which has been tried by bitcoin and doge and has failed. Once it is clear that steemit is the only successful platform, people will come flooding back.
What changes are coming for voting?
There is a hardfork coming tomorrow. At the moment you can do 40 votes a day at full power, but it will reduce to 5 votes per day at full power. Of course people can still do more votes than that, but it will be with diminshed power, and hence diminished reward.
But the 5 votes at 100% are worth 8x more than now also. This is an awesome idea IMO and will help with redistribution.
Thank you both. To be honest, I also like the idea. Interesting to see the results.
Thank you so much for posting this. In my opinion, we need as many fact based pieces from people who "get it" as possible. There are many people here who flat out don't "get it". I am definitely one of them. I came here to write. I have no clue how things work "behind the curtain"... but I trust that the people "behind the curtain" have an incentive and the knowhow to make tweaks that will lead to Steemit thriving. In the meantime, I'm just trying to work in the current system and help the site as much as I can (which I know is not a whole lot... but I'll try!) One suggestion I would make is that people who "get it" should keep in mind the type of personalities this site attracts. Many are here because of the "decentralized" nature of the site. By definition, this means they have a hard time trusting those "behind the curtain". In my opinion the best way to generate this trust is through fact based posts like this one. Anyway... it was great to read something positive about the direction in which we are heading. Sorry for all of the "quotes"... ugh.
Even the Empire wasn't built in a day...
Patience.
I think the steemit experiment is just getting started. I'm not intelligent enough to claim steemit is sustainable, but i definitely don't think it's over yet.
I agree - standard fluctuations. "Americans" and Northern Europeans are quick to lose interest when they realize they will not instantly become billionaires.
Visitors per day I guess? You are probably getting this from web traffic numbers which are significantly higher than blockchain users. That's all good, and those visitors count too when it comes to assessing the success of the platform.
However, it concerns me that there is basically no growth since July according to your figures (and the blockchain agrees). The July 4 megapayout was the big bang event that created maximum exposure for the platform. It was a brilliant to do things that way in terms of creating a news event and attention to spark growth. Which it did, but that growth was short-lived. What now? Stagnation, but not a big decline. Yellow alert.
@smooth thank you for continuing to be a truth teller on the platform. It's realists like you that give digital currencies credibility to mainstream users. And it's real content that can't be found elsewhere, incentivized by monetary rewards, that I continue to believe is the big opportunity for a social network like Steemit: https://steemit.com/protocols/@ntomaino/the-real-opportunity-for-a-social-network-with-monetary-incentives-built-in
Yes, these are front end stats, visitors per day... wasn't the post megapayout growth perhaps a little more than expected and more than the immature platform could handle?
I think of this "stagnation" more of as a consolidation. Don't most things including crypto projects grow in spurts and steps?
It is hard to say what was expected, but in some ways it is clearly true that the platform was not ready to handle it.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What you describe does indeed happen but the 'one hit wonder' phenomenon is real as well, including some crypto projects.
"but the 'one hit wonder' phenomenon is real as well"
I can't disagree with you there... here's to hoping this is not the case...
as long you put your voting slider on 10% and leave it there ... everything will be just fine.
I would say it's not the end of the world - but as a scientist and web marketer for the past 15 or so years ... looking at those charts for the last month is not encouraging. I still think a fundamental change to how money is distributed based on votes needs to happen. E.g. change the voting power function from n^2 to something more sane, say the 1.1 power, so that most user's votes are more meaningful. Perhaps keep the flag power at a higher ratio if people insist on that (E.g. flag vote power could go like n^1.5 while upvote power goes like n^1.1).
This is important because new users who invest some money or time should get some kind of meaningful reward for the SP they have.
As it is now, putting in $500 of one's hard earned money (or equivalent amount of time) is a waste of time/money. Why? 500SP is basically nothing at all compared to accounts with 5k, 10k, 100k, 500k, etc.
New users may not know all of this, but they do know that their votes and the votes of their new friends don't seem to count for diddly squat (unless they friend a whale).
Good point. You put in $10000 and you get much less influence per dollar then 100,000. Or do I misunderstand? At the same time, whales use their power to keep the site working well, so some extra power, like n^1.2 may be appropriate.
Yes, exactly. So, for instance I have like $2,000 worth of SP. My votes are worth one or two cents. Who will be willing to invest TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS so their vote can be worth one or two cents? I ended up doing some back of the envelope calculations and posted the results in a new post https://steemit.com/steempower/@nonlinearone/your-votes-don-t-matter-back-of-the-envelope-steem-power-madness-calculations