Looking for answers and insights in the voting patterns of whales, dolphins and minnows.

How many authors are using all of their voting power?

Answer: Only ~2.3%.

What data is included in the analysis?

• The period spans 28 days: from 2016-08-15 to 2016-08-11.
• Accounts created after 2016-08-14 are excluded in this analysis.
• Author categorization is done using current vesting_shares values.
  • Whales are defined as first 69 accounts with log(vesting_shares) > 8.5
  • Dolphins are defined as next 197 accounts with log(vesting_shares) between 7.5 and 8.5
  • Minnows are defined as next 866 accounts with log(vesting_shares) between 6.5 and 7.5
• Analysis is not totally accurate due to the rolling nature of voting power depletion (over 5 days). This model uses simple daily vote averages. This means that the results show upper bound of % used voting power and the real number is likely lower.
• Disclaimer: I'm not a data scientist and this data may contain errors.

How many accounts use X% of their voting power?

Note: accounts with zero votes are excluded from the graph.

Answers:

• Voting power is not being fully used by an absolute majority of Steem accounts.

What is the distribution of used voting power among whales, dolphins and minnows?

Answers:

• Most whales and dolphins are not using their voting power and are missing out on possible curation rewards.
• Whales voting patterns are quite similar to dolphins.

What would be the distribution of used voting power among whales, dolphins and minnows under hardfork "5 votes rule"?

Note: likely change of user behaviour due to hardfork does not allow to apply these insights directly.

Answers:

• Hard fork voting power change would increase influence of less engaged authors across all marine species.
• Steem payout changes would be mostly influenced by voting preferences of less active whales.