A Brief History of Randowhale - How it made 70k+SBD in 55 days.
According to Steemd.com, @randowhale came into existence on the 8th of June, 2017. This post constitutes a brief, and entire history of @randowhale usage by the Steemit Community since it entered the oceans.
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I made a post yesterday about how @randowhale was being used by the community, and offered some musings about how I'd like to see it used. That's the data I will be opening with. Please find below, fifty users on Steemit that have used their own SBD to upvote the content of others using @randowhale
Top 50 - Voting for the content of others with Randowhale
| User | Other-Votes | SBD Spent |
|---|---|---|
| @gringalicious | 124 | 231 |
| @danlupi | 90 | 176 |
| @kennyskitchen | 64 | 126 |
| @buzzbeergeek | 64 | 121 |
| @overkillcoin | 57 | 96 |
| @thecryptofiend | 56 | 112 |
| @theywillkillyou | 52 | 101 |
| @cryplectibles | 50 | 97 |
| @noboxes | 48 | 48 |
| @yunkzilla | 42 | 76 |
| @alexvan | 40 | 45 |
| @harrydenture | 37 | 74 |
| @alienposts | 37 | 74 |
| @d-pend | 34 | 58 |
| @getvotes | 32 | 64 |
| @razvanelulmarin | 28 | 56 |
| @selfsteemit | 27 | 54 |
| @lichtblick | 27 | 51 |
| @karenmckersie | 27 | 29 |
| @kmyang62 | 27 | 50 |
| @acidyo | 27 | 49.337 |
| @ausbitbank | 27 | 54 |
| @world5list | 26 | 49 |
| @livingwaters | 26 | 41 |
| @gmuxx | 26 | 51 |
| @hastla | 26 | 50 |
| @soldrakon | 24 | 48 |
| @michaelstobiersk | 24 | 42 |
| @graviton | 24 | 45 |
| @cipriang | 24 | 24 |
| @btcvenom | 24 | 30 |
| @torem-di-torem | 23 | 44 |
| @sykochica | 23 | 41 |
| @querdenken | 23 | 46 |
| @allasyummyfood | 23 | 46 |
| @ezblog | 22 | 27 |
| @infokrieg | 22 | 44 |
| @decentralizd | 22 | 44 |
| @steemitadventure | 21 | 40 |
| @onealfa | 21 | 35 |
| @diggerdugg | 21 | 36.29 |
| @customnature | 21 | 38 |
| @blueorgy | 21 | 42 |
| @britt.the.ish | 21 | 40 |
| @sighmanjestah | 20 | 40 |
| @saywha | 20 | 33 |
| @rigaronib | 20 | 40 |
| @gyanibilli | 20 | 40 |
| @doitvoluntarily | 20 | 39 |
| @clayboyn | 20 | 40 |
These people are honourable citizens of Steemit in my eyes, and I'm lucky to count some of them as followers, and people that I follow!
Now, let's have a look at the other side of the data, the users that have, themselves, self upvoted their way into the top 50.
Top 50 - Self-Voting Using Randowhale
| User | Votes | SBD |
|---|---|---|
| warn-a-brutha | 542 | 582 |
| sikklel | 311 | 353 |
| mxzn | 288 | 475 |
| digital-gypsy | 284 | 406 |
| healtylife | 248 | 496 |
| healthyrecipe | 248 | 440 |
| sepracore | 246 | 288 |
| inkedandsexy | 245 | 381 |
| gwapology | 238 | 341 |
| sandrino | 232 | 352 |
| sunnypictures | 229 | 234 |
| andyluy | 219 | 403 |
| codebreaker | 207 | 386 |
| anton-kostroma | 204 | 313 |
| ura-soul | 201 | 361 |
| vegansilverstack | 192 | 343 |
| harrydenture | 168 | 332.001 |
| allmonitors | 157 | 278 |
| ehujra | 153 | 157 |
| brumest | 152 | 259 |
| bhightech | 146 | 171.2 |
| raja | 143 | 225 |
| leejin-33 | 140 | 280 |
| ericwoelk | 139 | 278 |
| unhorsepower777 | 138 | 243 |
| hotandrandom | 130 | 260 |
| kalemandra | 127 | 216 |
| tinashe | 125 | 226.001 |
| musclenerd | 125 | 161 |
| allasyummyfood | 120 | 240 |
| brothermic | 115 | 225 |
| yehey | 111 | 222 |
| kaylinart | 110 | 206 |
| rkrijgsman | 107 | 125 |
| jwolf | 107 | 144 |
| finkavenue | 106 | 212 |
| lily-da-vine | 102 | 204 |
| cryptopassion | 101 | 101 |
| thedanzel | 101 | 186 |
| jimjam1210 | 100 | 200 |
| carry0n | 100 | 200 |
| wvm | 98 | 187 |
| inoue | 96 | 143 |
| danlupi | 93 | 180 |
| verbal-d | 93 | 180 |
| hitmeasap | 92 | 182 |
| hot-girls | 91 | 151 |
| olegw | 89 | 141 |
| hiroyamagishi | 89 | 133 |
| penguinpablo | 88 | 156 |
In Summary, since the birth of @randowhale:
44896 Votes have been requested
88.71% Have been Self Votes
11.29% have been votes for other people's content.
According to the data, $77,423SBD has been transferred to @randowhale in exchange for votes, in 55 days of operation. That's an enormous sum of money. At current SBD to USD Exchange rates, that's $75,322USD. In Australian money, that's $94,566.23.
That's extreme.. People complain about self-voting, but Randowhale is generally accepted. The steemit paradox.
Honestly, when the anti-self-voting fiasco was going down, this was one of my pet peeves...people would randowhale upvote their own posts (and even comments, in some cases) about the evils of self-upvoting. I'm pretty mellow when it comes to allocating your VP, but the hypocrisy was just too much at times.
"I don't self-vote, but Randowhale is fine" is sadly something many people seem to think. People are weird.
it was more people making a comment on your post, NOT upvoting you, and upvoting themselves that irked me.
That is either because they were too infatuated with their own voices - or they believed in the profitability of up-voting their own comments since they ran out of their own posts to self-up-vote.
I do believe that as services such as randowhale see their voting power decline to critical levels due to saturation, we will see the rise of randowhale satellites (with their own voting power pools and a LOT of delegated Steem Power.
And that seems to be one way to game the system... as diminishing voting power is one of the only mechanisms by which the pool is not "raped", correct?
Yep. I am thinking of examining booster next to see what we can find there.
I agree, and I think it's because everybody needs a boost to get more exposure for their posts.
People are lazy, it's possible to work for your exposure. Join chatrooms. Befriend people. Be active in the community. Write content people want to read.
With work there comes success, but people want the shortcut.
All that work doesn't always pay off, especially for the small minnows. Curation is difficult now, there's so many posts every day, and only so much voting power available. A lot of people are holding onto their votes now to preserve their voting power, so it's not getting spread around.
the person behind @randowhale did a lot of upvoting members on Steemit prior to creating the @randowhale account.
The main difference between what was done before and what is done now is that before, if you got the person's notice you may have got on his upvote bot. Once that happened, you got a pretty regular upvote.
Now, anyone who wants to spend an SBD can get an upvote from that person. So, while he's getting a direct income from the vote requests, he's also spreading the upvotes a lot wider.
Seems to me it is a win win for all involved.
I don't see a difference between @randowhale and self-upvoting. Instead of getting paid by upvoting himself he gets paid by upvoting others, plus the benefits are not big and sometimes at a loss. The only benefit is that you get more exposure. You will see he will flag me down for this.
I congratulate the top 50 that use @randowhale for the greater good. And I also don't think that it's not a big deal for people to self-promote as it is already hard enough for the little fish in a big pond to get known. Thank you for your post and have a blessed day.
There is the promote button; but its 'easier' to use randowhale, because you get that money 'back' via a vote instead of it going into the promote void.
I feel like that functionality is broken.
I have no qualms if people want to use randowhale, or booster, or whatever comes up next, because Steemit is a free market and people can choose what they want to do with their own funds. However, I would like more people to understand how the promoted section works because it is more of a benefit to the Steemit eco system. In that it 'burns' SBD, which in turn lowers the amount of SBD in circulation, therefore raising the price and lowering inflation. randowhale has made a killing in SBD while using his high SP to reward people from the pool, which doesn't hurt him at all. Smart business move on his part.
Promote your post does nothing but burn your steem. You get nothing in return. I was wanting to get a photo contest i was doing in the eyes of alot of people. I was giving away my own steem and used 50 sbd to promote the post to the top. I got not a single vote or comment from it. All it does is burn your steem so whales steem are worth more. Its broke and a giant waste to those trying to be seen and noticed
Sounds to me like you're taking your ONE experience with it, and taking that experience as the end all be all of experiences. I (and many others, for a fact) have put in x amount of SBD to promote a post and it was of value at the end of the day. I don't know what your post was about, but I feel like you're saying "One time, I took a shit in the yard and posted a pic of it to Steemit, paid 50 SBD to promote it and no one liked it! The system is broken!" Clearly the market didn't value your content as highly as you did.
I am one of the best photographers on steemit i doubt my post is shit. But i am sure your always right though.
I don't doubt your skills man. I don't think I'm always right, but in this specific case I do. The promote tab is a lot like starting a business. You have to take the risk of investment before you know if it's going to pay off or not, capitalism at its finest. In this case, you valued your content at X amount of SBD and the market didn't reciprocate. If it had done well, I am sure you would have gave it a rousing endorsement and would have used it again in the future. I apologize if my prior response came off harsh. That'll happen late night after a few old fashioned's :) Steem on bro.
If only @promoted had as much SP as randowhale..
Randowhale is cool, but id really like to see an initiative supporting authors with great content instead of trash.
Thanks for the info, how much steem power did randowhale have when the account was created?
It doesn't show the delegated Steem Power, but the SP is growing as the bot gets curation rewards from the posts that it is upvtoing.
You can see this here: https://steemwhales.com/randowhale?weekly
Thanks, I am still a newbie to steemit, so I was just curious how much his upvotes were worth when he started selling upvotes... If I am understanding correctly it would be worthless for people to send him sbd to pay for upvotes if his upvotes were only worth 0.01 at the start...?
There was Steem power delegated to randowhale from various sources (I guess, which is how the initial upvotes were significant for early users of the service)
He owns a lot of accounts and a lot of SP, since he was an early adopter and mined a lot. He didn't spend a lot of money to buy them at an exchange.
You didn't count the curation rewards. Basically @randowhale took back quite a lot from every post he upvoted.
Interesting question: but it doesnt seem clear!
My opinion is it will go to better content than people upvoting their own comments.
Yes! I think the people would put that bit of extra time and energy into their posts since there content would be judged soly be the people. Can't say im shocked to see a few yunk people listed under "voting for the content of others". Even I was buffed a few times. If you have the time later on would u explain this a bit further to me? Run me through it? Id like to return the fav eventually but lack even the basic knowledge or just point me into the right direction/post. TY!
@randowhale did take a lot of steem to start with. Also makes good payouts on it's posts. People obviously love it though
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Can I just totally point out that 20K of that and I could permanently be paying folks in steem -- sooner, rather than later...
face palm
Something about Randowhale doesn't sit well in my stomach. I know it's acceptable, and fine to promote yourself, but it takes more of the charm out of steemit for me. I'm not even sure how that promote button works. I figure if people like my stories, I'll eventually grow into a whale. Maybe I'm old fashioned (which seems ridiculous to type in a comment section of a social network platform based on blockchain, lol).