Dolphins and Minnows get more influence
There have been many twists and turns along the way with the experiment and it clearly is a polarising topic. I have really noticed the effect of it when upvoting posts and comments. My vote is finally worth something!!! If your new to Steemit further details of "the experiment" can be found in the link at the bottom of this post.
Thanks to @furion and https://steemdata.com/ we have access to lots of data from the Steem Blockchain in a digestible format. In this post I interrogate the numbers to see how the experiment is going.
There are some interesting results...
Distribution of Payouts Per Day
This first graph shows the breakdown of the post payouts coloured by author reputation. There is a clear blank section at the bottom right of the graph. This means, more posts are getting some reward and fewer are getting nothing or just pence. i.e. a fairer distribution of rewards.
This will have been caused partly by the increase in price of STEEM but I have noticed that my recent posts seem to get a more stable increase as I get votes instead of wild swings caused by whale voting. This is good news for everyone.
STEEM Price
The daily payout fund in SBD is affected, not only by the voting of whales but also significantly by the price of STEEM. The following graphs shows the Price of STEEM in March and the the daily author payouts.
The daily fund is off is way up and It has never been a better time to be writing on Steemit, so what are you waiting for?
If there are more authors engaging with the platform then the rewards will be distributed among more people so you would expect to see the median and average payout falling.
The following graph shows that it is staying steady but in fact as the daily payouts have increased the following graph is basically highlighting an increase in the distribution of author rewards.
This next graph shows the distribution of payouts using a histogram. There is visibly longer tail for payouts after the 12th of March when the experiment began.
Votes Comments and Posts
The next graphs are the most surprising for me. The number of votes, comments and posts are off the chart since the experiment began. This coincides with the price increase but the data is very encouraging.
Active Authors
Another notable feature to draw out is the Active Authors. Each day an author can write multiple posts so for Active Authors I have only counted each author once per day. @fyrstikken commented in a related post today that "a few people make a lot of comments and a lot of people make a few posts". This data collaborates this indicates that the active authors and number of comments is increasing dramatically.
The author payouts is also up but we have seen in an earlier graph this is caused by the rise in price of STEEM.
I have labelled any vote that is less than 5% Steem Power as a bot vote.
Posting Patterns of Different Groups
I have grouped authors of different reputation levels together and plotted the number of authors who posted each day for each group.
There is a clear uptrend in number of posts for the range of Reputation 35 to 66. There appears to be more posting by people in these groups since the experiment began.
Conclusions
- The distribution of payouts has clearly changed and many of us minnows are noticing it when we upvote a post or comment. Our vote finally counts.
- People are writing more
- People are commenting more
- More equitable payouts, more writing and more comments suggest there is more engagement on the platform.
Of course the effect of this experiment will play out over time and you would not expect instant changes but the changes already visible in these graphs are more pronounced than I was expecting. There have also been other things going on, @dan leaving, the jump in the price and the negativity and backlash from the experiment, which all feed into the mix.
What do you think of the experiment??
Further Reading about the experiment can be found in @abits original post
Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.
I'm really happy seeing these results! I was in favour of the experiment since I think we shall create the best foundation to Steemit as we can make, and testing different models is an absolute must to achieve that. Once we have the strongest foundation we can create, and implemented, we are ready to grow Steemit in terms of number of users.
With HF17 some more changes will be included to which some of us do not agree with, hence HF17 is not implemented yet. On points like removing the limit of number of posts, introducing split of comment pool from general reward pool, I think we need to test this. I commented earlier today to a post of @pfunk you may be interested in reading:
I am all for trying out new things as long as there is a clear goal or roadmap for what we are testing, its purpose and what we are trying to achieve with it. At some stage thought the platform has to mature and come out of beta. I am worried if we keep trying out things we will never get out. I guess I am just getting a bit impatient.
I understand you completely!
I'm just a bit more than 2 month with Steemit; But I did see a lot of imbalance, and we do not have enough knowledge gained over the last year to understand what a GOOD implementation of the basic rules are. I would think many tests would already have been executed in the last year, but so far I could not really discover a solid plan and execution behind it. What I do know, when I came on board as an active user, I was so happy a guild help me out from time to time, otherwise I would have not been here anymore (it had nothing to do with the rewards itself, but there was just a small group of users who got all the attention and rewards, so it looked at least to me). Another reason I'm still here is that I really like the fact the we can work as a community respecting each other and trying to work together to make Steemit a great place to be, like the Whales finally pulled it of to work together in executing the No Whale vote experiment, knowing not all were on the same page. I appreciate that really much!
Now we have the HF17 as an issue with Witnesses not agreeing to the changes as implemented. Lets see what comes out of that and how this one will be progressed, but around HF17 a lot of theories are posted, but I didn't see practical test results. Since the discussions around HF17 are mostly regarding the basics of Steemit and Steem, also these need to come out of theory and put into practice through tests, and based on the results define what works good and what shall be trashed. I cannot wait to see Steemit to come out of Beta, like you, but lets get out of Beta when we get the basics right!
I agree 100% with your comment. We are where we are as the saying goes but we need to sort out the basics and I hope get a bit for forward momentum going.
Interesting conversation here and I agree with you very much @edje
We seem to be on the same page, post HF17/18, vote value has disappeared and there is no communication. Why do HFs not have Alpha as the goal and step in linear formation (mistakes will be made) towards that objective? Upped and followed!
I am hopeful the value will reappear over the payout period. It would be great if someone could confirm this.
I have suggested to @timcliff (whom I admire very much for his candour and willingness to front up and communicate when things like this crop up) that an explanation of the rewards pool and voting from yesterday and for the next seven days and then onwards. It looks like the budgie cage as I call it, the scraps which are so small that they do not register, will create another bonanza for the SP owners.
I don't know if people noticed yet but it seems that bots have died. I wish I could take credit and not say it was a fluke, but just a few days ago I was making the suggestion that the posting key should be removed to stop bot voting and it seems that something happened that causes that. Cannot say for sure but it does have something to do with the posting key.
https://steemit.com/bots/@noganoo/breaking-news-steemit-auto-voters-are-down-investigating-zeroday-hardfork-switchover-glitches#@baah/re-noganoo-breaking-news-steemit-auto-voters-are-down-investigating-zeroday-hardfork-switchover-glitches-20170323t175443382z
The bots are dead, but the Steemit philosophy continues ... would be much obliged for an @baah critical analysis :) https://steemit.com/philosophy/@mindhunter/why-we-need-philosophy-to-stem-our-steemian-desires-for-certainty
This analysis cuts off a few days ago so we can't see the death of the bots on it, I'll run it again in a few days and we should be able to see the exact time of death :)
:) I'll see what I can do.
A very interesting post dear friend @eroche data that invite an analysis
Thank you.
Wow! Very comprehensive data. Could you do similar in a month? I like seeing these kinds of statistics!
Thanks for the comment. I will definately so this analysis again fairly regularly. I have also plans to extend it to draw out features of the platform, characteristics of successfully posters. Those sort of things. Stay tuned.
I may have to come back and try to digest these graphs as I don't have the brain for it. That being said, I love seeing that my votes have worth. My voting habits, comments and posts haven't really changed since the experiment and I don't expect that they'll change after the experiment. I'm just happy to be doing my thing and reading great stuff. :)
Mine haven't either, I did hold off writing a post for a few days but I am back writing again. I am liking seeing my votes make the post rewards change :) thanks for reading.
Very interessting article! Thank you for sharing all these statistics.
Thanks for reading.
Nice ! :)
Thanks
The total daily reward pool is affected only by price of Steem and not affected by voting of whales )
The daily payout SBD amount is not affected by whales but the amount distributed for each past and to whom is affected. Thanks for the clarification.
Hi @eroche, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Thats great, thanks for the mention @shadowspub.