Dust in the air: Raising Steem

Like most of my posts, I just guess at stuff based on what I know at the time - which makes them educated guesses. The quality of the education gets called into question at this point of course but regardless of what others think of what say, I like to discuss Steem things, even if it is just with myself - which is kind of the case if you knew my writing process.

Yesterday I wrote a post about how I see the future of Steem distribution and there were some comments about whale earnings and for example, @lordbutterfly brought up accounts like Haejin - and there others similar like Sweetsssj - who are earning high amounts and leaving others to eat their dust.

But is this the case?

Well, from Steemworld, Haejin has numbers that look like this:

Yep, he "earns" almost a dolphin's worth of Steem a week - or, He could be making 10 minnows a week starting from zero. His stake, he can do as he chooses as they say....

But, he is only one account on the blockchain and while that is a massive amount for one account, it works out to about 250,000 Steem a year with curation. Yeah, that is massive too but... There is ~26,000,000 that will fill the reward pool over the next twelve months and a little over 50% of that is going to go to post rewards.

This means that the large majority of the Steem rewards are not going to go to Haejin, Sweetsssj's family or the various other very large accounts that plague the platform in this kind of way. The large majority is going to go to others that likely have less stake than a whale, orca or dolphin.

What this means is that the smaller accounts are going to be collecting Steem at a faster rate than than the larger accounts and while currently whales own a huge majority (much less if you take Steemit Inc stake out of the equation), it is going to balance over time. Even an account like my own where I am relatively well rewarded (based on volume) is only an *individual account and if you remember from the chart from this post the other day:

you can see that the drop away in account numbers is very severe from 500 on and after 30,000, it trickles to very small numbers. While some of those larger accounts are decent earners still, most of them are not posting often or, at all. This indicates that the majority of the rewarded SP is going to likely fall into the laps of accounts that are smaller than 30,000 SP also.

But then, the newly joining accounts are going to join at zero or thereabouts and then start earning or buying in and remember, there is 100,000,000 liquid Steem currently available to vest. This means at the lower reaches, there is a growing number of accounts created but the higher end is going to remain relatively static in numbers, even if some of those individual accounts are earning well. This leads to the growing mass of Steem Power going to the lower end and that is where those accounts are also likely to actively distribute their value, either on their friends, themselves or perhaps on content they enjoy.

On top of this, there are also going to be people selling their stakes as prices increase and those who got it the cheapest and easiest are also likely to sell some of it earlier than those who earned or bought it at a higher rate or effort level. this means that top end earners are likely to send their stake out to a (along with their families to the same) Bittrex account.

Remember that this is a Proof of Stake blockchain where the amount of Steem held is directly proportional to the draw on the pool. So, while Haejin can keep growing based on the stake at a steady rate, the mass at the bottom keeps growing at a steady rate too and, perhaps even faster as large volumes of accounts could also be buying small amounts of Steem. Slowly, the mass at the bottom starts to have an increasing percentage pull on the pool while the top end decreases. Yes, this happens painfully slowly at the moment but it will gather momentum as time passes.

For some perspective, the accounts between 100 and 10,000 Steem Power hold 23,000,000 Steem powered up. If they were to vote as one, they would deliver an upvote of, wait for it... 628 dollars - 10 times a day. For a total of 6280 dollars worth out of the pool. That is around 22,000 Steem value a week. Now remember that a lot of other accounts above this vote on those smaller accounts too and we can start to see that while Haejin might be raping the pool, it will happen at a decreasing rate over time as more and more people are earning and powering up in the lower reaches.

What would happen if they started flagging him as one? What would happen if they started voting on witnesses as one? That 23 million Steem Power earns about 1210 Steem from the pool a day or 8400 steem a week in interest payments also. @pharesim once said about 2 years ago, the small accounts don't seem to know the power they hold. And, that power is growing. They won't ever likely act as one but, they will act similarly and will most likely interact the most with accounts closer to themselves while those with higher stake will interact across the platform voting on accounts that are often lower than themselves in stake as, that is where the content is created.

For example, while I get some votes from some larger accounts, most of their votes go on smaller accounts and, most of my votes go on smaller accounts than myself. Part of the reason for this is, most of the accounts larger than myself don't post very often and, they don't really need it to grow. So, they distribute downward, I distribute downward, and those I vote on likely distribute downward or around the same level also.

When prices increase, the large holders are going to do things like buy houses and cars or need some chunks of profit, and will slowly bleed some of their stake or earnings from the platform. This will fall into the hands that are buying it up in small quantities in the lower reaches and will again mean that the percentage at the bottom grows. The thing is that with numbers comes stability and this is the same with numbers at the top too, many will fall for various reasons while the many at the bottom will grow in number and vote weight because even as they sell, similar sized accounts will be buying.

As said, it is just a matter of time in my opinion. And this is the thing with any look into the future of anything at all, it is all opinion, there is no fact in it until if and when it happens. I do think distribution is happening though and in time, I think the numbers will show it as well.

People think all of the Steem dust is insignificant but in volume, it builds mountains.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]