Steem: Account Claims Analysis

in #utopian-io6 years ago (edited)

Repository

https://github.com/steemit/steem

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Scope
  • An overview in numbers
  • Largest Claimed Accounts holders
  • Non-claimers
  • Claimed -> Creation
  • Conclusion
  • Tools and Scripts
  • Relevant Links and Resources


avatar-2191931_1280.png
source


Introduction

On the 25th September 2018, Hardfork 20 went live, and a part of this fork included 'fundamental changes in how new accounts get created' source.

Instead of burning STEEM to create an account, the fork provided the option to create a new account using a claimed or 'discounted' account, where the fee is paid using Resource Credits (RCs).

One advantage to this new approach is that accounts can be created instantly by those holding the pending account claims.

Any Steem account with enough Steem Power (which constitutes the number of Resource Credits an account has available), has the option to 'buy' a (pending) claimed account. At the time of writing, the Resource Credit cost of claiming an account is 8,973,874,577,576 RCs. This number was obtained by the output a failed account claim (due to lack of RC 'mana') using Steem Connect's 'claim account' web-page.

Using https://steemd.com/@abh12345 as a guide with a 'max_mana' (RCs) of 35,328,902,414,999 and the current RC cost of claiming an account, it is estimated that that a Steem account will require to hold approximately 4469 Active Steem Power (And have 100% 'mana'/RCs available) to create a pending claimed account.

35,328,902,414,999 / 8,973,874,577,576 = 3.936

17,590 Steem Power / 3.936 = 4,469 SP

The amount of 'mana' held by an account relates to the 'active' Steem Power held. This is different from how Steem Power influences the likes of VESTs held when voting for a Witness. Delegated SP counts towards the total 'mana' held by an account, but it is owned SP that counts towards VESTs/Witness votes.

This analysis takes a look at the numbers behind account claims to far: how many claims have been made, by whom, the numbers eligible to claim, and how many claims have been used to create new accounts thus far.


Scope

The data for this analysis was gathered on the 16th January 2019 and unless otherwise stated, the data processed covers the period from the 25th September 2018 to the 15th January 2019 inclusive.


An overview in numbers

The very first account claim was made on the 25th September 2018 by 'blocktrades'.

From this date up until 16th January 2019, 221,935 accounts have been claimed and this number is shared between 566 claimants.

Looking at the history of account claims thus far, we can see that early on the daily claim total fluctuated. Many accounts were testing the new feature, and the number of RCs required to claim an account was unstable.



On the 29th September, 4302 account claims were made, the largest for any given day thus far. On this date, 20 accounts made at least one claim, with 'smartsteem' claiming over 39% of the daily total.



This number is in fact the largest number of claims made on any given day.



Perhaps as expected, 'steem' generally create the most accounts each day, but there have been some occasions when other accounts have surpassed their total.

Incidentally, In order to claim 1685 accounts at today's cost, this would require approximately 7.53 million Steem Power!


Largest 'Pending Account Claims' Holders

The period of data collection covers a total of 114 days with a sum total of 221,935 pending accounts claimed. Below is a chart which shows the the ten accounts which have claimed the most, along with a grouping of total claims from the other 556 accounts.



'steem', have by far the most account claims. 'steemit', the largest account by Steem Power, has not made any claims so far.

The remainder of this 'top 10' list are a mix of applications and Bid-bots which as per the above, have been able to claim a high number of accounts due to delegations from the likes of 'steem' related accounts, 'freedom', and 'blocktrades'.

The other 556 accounts that have claimed at least one account hold a 33% share of all claims, with 228 of these accounts claiming less than ten, and 122 of these claiming just one account.

Non-claimers

Using the figures calculated earlier in the analysis, this section takes a look at the number of accounts 'eligible' to claim an account.

Using: STEEM Per MVests = 497.936 STEEM



source

We can find the number of Steem accounts currently holding at least 4,469 Steem Power. And as of today (16th January 2019), a total of 2210 accounts have at least this amount.

Roughly speaking, this means that around only 25% of all accounts with the RCs required to claim an account have done so. This percentage is not completely accurate however, as there is a good chance that: some accounts have powered down below the number of RCs required / lost delegated SP / just reached the total required / had enough RCs at one point but the cost has increased, etc, during the 114 days in which claiming accounts has been possible.

Including 'steemit', there are 28 accounts with over 500,000 active SP that have yet to claim an account. Notable mentions include 'dtube', 'trafalgar', 'adsactly', 'hendrikdegrote', and 'dcommerce'.

Claimed -> Creation

Prior to the 16th January 2018, a total of 51612 accounts have been created with a fee of 0.0000 STEEM and with 0.0000 delegation. They have all been created on or following 25th September 2018 (Hardfork go-live date), apart from 22 accounts which were all created in the first week or so of the Steem blockchain's existence. (For the sake of this analysis, these 22 accounts have been excluded.)

It is therefore assumed, that prior to 16th January 2019, 51590 accounts have been created from a 'pending account claim token'.

Thus far, a total of 333 Steem accounts have created a new account via previous claim. This means that almost 60% of the accounts that have claimed, have gone on to create a Steem account using a claim.

The table below shows the top 20 Steem Accounts that have created accounts using a claimed account 'token', the number of account created, and the percentage of 'creates to claims'.



Part of the reason for this analysis work was to try to gauge if account creation was 'ahead' of account claims. In the past the account creation process seemed bottle-necked, but these numbers seem to suggest that the number of pending claimed accounts (which can be turned into accounts for 'free' in minutes) is not currently an issue and that there are plenty in hand.

Going forward, I am particularly interested in the number of accounts created by the likes of 'steemmonsters', 'steemhunt', 'oracle-d', 'partiko', 'fundition', and other applications seeking fame and glory (and consumers!) from outside the existing Steem community. As a holder of 84 pending accounts myself, I would look to support an application that was growing seemingly faster than it was able to claim accounts.

Notable absentees from the above list, who are present in the top 10 account claiming accounts (seen in the section titled 'Largest 'Pending Account Claims' Holders') include 'smartsteem' (9 creates), 'appreciator', 'buildawhale', and 'steempress-io' (6 creates). Hopefully in time, these accounts will find a good use for their sizable number of claims.

Conclusion

Since Hardfork 20, the cost of claiming an account has risen. In this post dated 8th October 2017, the Resource Credit cost was estimated to be 5,000,000,000,000 RCs, around 2500 Steem Power. These numbers are almost half the cost when compared to today's figures.

The number of accounts claimed daily now fairly steady following a settling in period. The cost claiming an account likely to be the reason for this.

Over the time-frame covered, 221,935 claims have resulted in 51590 account creates, around 23%. This indicates that at present, demand is not out-stripping supply.

There are, in percentage terms, a large number of accounts who have the ability to claim but are not doing so. I would like to see this number rise - similar to how I feel about the distribution of STEEM.

Personally, I would like to see this percentage rise (approximately 25% at present), and believe that every account with enough Steem Power/ Resource Credits available should claim accounts.

Who is admitted into our special community, and how they are admitted, is relevant information for every Steemian, small stakeholder or large. source

Thanks

Asher

Witness: @steemcommunity


Tools and Scripts

This analysis was produced by gathering data from SteemSQL, a copy of the Steem blockchain data held in a SQL Server database which is managed by @arcange. The scripts were written in Linqpad 5 and the charts produced using MS Excel.


-- What columns we got?
select top 10 * from TxAccountClaims
order by timestamp asc

-- Total claims in Scope of analysis
select count(*) from TxAccountClaims where timestamp < '01/16/2019 00:00:00'

-- Account Claims GROUPED BY DATE
select left(timestamp,11), count(*) from TxAccountClaims
group by left(timestamp,11)
order by cast(left(timestamp,11) as date) asc

-- Account Claims GROUPED BY DATE, Creator
select left(timestamp,11), Creator, count(*) from TxAccountClaims
group by left(timestamp,11), Creator 
order by cast(left(timestamp,11) as date) asc

-- Claims by account - peak day
select creator, count(*) from TxAccountClaims 
where [timestamp] between '09/29/2018 00:00:00' and '09/29/2018 23:59:59'
group by creator
order by count(*) desc

-- Total claims by account
select creator, count(*) from TxAccountClaims 
where timestamp < '01/16/2019 00:00:00'
group by creator
order by count(*) desc

-- Steem Accounts over 4469 SP
select name, vesting_shares,cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000 AS SP, (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) as Active_SP
from accounts with (nolock) 
where name in (select name from accounts with (nolock) 
where (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) > 4469)
order by (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) desc

-- 30 Top Active SP accounts who have not Claimed
select top 30 name, vesting_shares,cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000 AS SP, (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) as Active_SP
from accounts with (nolock) 
where name in (select name from accounts with (nolock) 
where (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) > 4469)
and name not in (select creator from TxAccountClaims)
order by (cast(left(vesting_shares, len(vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)+(cast(left(received_vesting_shares, len(received_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000)-(cast(left(delegated_vesting_shares, len(delegated_vesting_shares)-6) as float)*497.936/1000000) desc

-- What columns we got?
select top 10 * from TxAccountCreates
order by timestamp asc

-- Accounts (in scope) Created from Pending Claimed Account
select fee, delegation, creator, new_account_name, timestamp from TxAccountCreates
where fee = 0.0000 and delegation = 0.0000
and timestamp < '01/16/2019 00:00:00'
and timestamp > '09/04/2016 00:00:00'
order by timestamp desc

-- Creator totals
select creator, count(*) from TxAccountCreates
where fee = 0.0000 and delegation = 0.0000
and timestamp < '01/16/2019 00:00:00'
and timestamp > '09/04/2016 00:00:00'
group by creator
order by count(*) desc

-- Creator totals
select creator, count(*) from TxAccountCreates
where fee = 0.0000 and delegation = 0.0000
and timestamp < '01/16/2019 00:00:00'
and timestamp > '09/04/2016 00:00:00'
and creator in ('smartsteem', 'appreciator', 'buildawhale', 'steempress-io')
group by creator
order by count(*) desc



Relevant Links and Resources

Links and resources used to help produce this analysis:

https://steemit.com/hf20/@steemitblog/velocity-hardfork-account-creation-guidelines

https://steemconnect.com/sign/claim_account? (creator=STEEM_ACCOUNT&fee=0.000%20STEEM&extensions=[])

https://steemd.com/@abh12345

https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/i-claimed-a-few-accounts-today-is-this-something-that-everyone-that-can-should-be-doing

Sort:  

Great work, Asher! I've been wondering if we're even somewhere close the limit of how many accounts can be created via RCs. Your work confirms that there are plenty of account creation tokens unused at the moment, ready to grow Steem. @steem could create way more accounts than they currently do, and so could other dApps and accounts. Now we "only" need real users to grab them :)

From what I've seen on the @steem account and also on others, they seem to claim new accounts at a regular basis, probably whenever the RC balance allows it? @steem not creating any new accounts throughout December (?) certainly made them accumulate quite a lot of tokens. So there's a chance that the current picture for @steem may be slightly skewed. From what I've seen, at least some of the high-SP accounts have a system in place to regularly claim accounts (since it's free after all), but are currently lacking the infrastructure behind to hand those out to new users (which can be quite some work, esp. if they want to provide recovery options...). Let's hope that this is solved soon.

It's interesting to see how the RC costs for the claims changed! I didn't even remember that it was as low as at 2500 GRC in beginning of October. The current value of below 9000 GRC is actually quite cheap compared to the costs in the last few weeks. beempy.com has this covered, here's the current state:


claim_account_costs.png
Measurements & image: @holger80

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Great additional info!

I am unsure about the limit of total CA's that could be in existance, but based on this quote from the linked @steemitblog post, I'm thinking we need not worry about 'maxing out':

Pending claimed accounts are not transferable to other users, but they do not expire, and there is no limit on how many an account can hold. (Well, technically speaking there is a limit of 9,223,372,036,854,775,806, but we do not expect anyone to reach it anytime soon.)

I have also seen, and spoken with, a couple of accounts that are running auto-claim scripts. I guess when your SP is in the 100's of thousands, this will save plenty of time going forward.

Costs have certainly rose, and it's something like $1500 at the current price of STEEM if you want to buy enough SP to start claiming an account every 3/4 days.

Comments on my linked post from October, and one here on this post, suggest that folks are not happy with this.

I've yet to find a place where you can securely create accounts from the claims, without the need to know any code. I was hoping SteemConnect would add this to their list of tools, as they have with the Claim Account page.

Thanks for the review and the extra chart, can never have enough of those :D

I've yet to find a place where you can securely create accounts from the claims, without the need to know any code. I was hoping SteemConnect would add this to their list of tools, as they have with the Claim Account page.

This is possible with steemworld.org. A big advantage there is that you can create accounts with public keys (=without knowing the master password of the new account). This is IMO a very important feature when creating accounts for others!

The reward of this comment goes 100 % to the author crokkon. This is done by setting the beneficiaries of this comment to 100 %.

Thank you for your review, @crokkon! Keep up the good work!

"Everyone can create an account for free" - - That was close to one of the statements made during the HF20 debates and pre-activation, and post-activation of HF20. It is still something that is passed about by people in power. The truth of the matter is that you need a lot of SP to create an account for free. The cost as I and others suspected has gone up.

Still it is good to see that on-line business/d-apps can create and a few do hold a good amount of accounts should they have a need to create accounts for new users of their system. The number of accounts held by some of the d-apps and portals could be used in the future to judge a d-app/front end to the steem blockchain level of interest in promoting and on-boarding of new users.

Yeah. Its around 1300$ to buy into SP with the ability to claim new account 'tokens' - that is a reasonable sum.

However, most of us don't have that much use for 100's of potential accounts, and will likely end up passing them on somehow when they are required. The apps are getting hold of some, and as you say, if one is spotted creating a load that will be seen as a good indicator of them doing well.

Cheers for the comment!

Very interesting indeed to see how communities are taking advantage of this feature to bring new users in! I am approaching 30 and continue to be excited about the potential to help onboard new Steemians in the coming months. I am surprised many more are not taking advantage of it!

Posted using Partiko iOS

Thanks!

Yes that's the highlight for me, I hope to see many more apps claiming, and accounts popping up from these claimed account holders.

Glad to hear you are picking some up, thanks for stopping by :)

What is the procedure to claim accounts?
I would like to do that but I don't know how.

Somewhat dated but still functioning process to claim:
https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/i-claimed-a-few-accounts-today-is-this-something-that-everyone-that-can-should-be-doing

You can also use @steemchiller’s SteemWorld.org

Posted using Partiko iOS

I believe, but am not 100% sure as I haven't tried it, but SteemWorld doesn't use SteemConnect as authorization?

Still, if you trust the man (which I see no reason why not to), this is another approach for sure :)

Still testing, but...



KeyChain has priority, so when both are active, KeyChain will be used (if extension is installed).

Nice!

Really great work you are doing with SteemWorld man, much appreciated!

I have an auto vote for your weekly support post, hopefully STEEM will come good and you'll do alright from it. Cheers!

https://steemconnect.com/sign/claim_account?creator=oldtimer&fee=0.000%20STEEM&extensions=[]

The link isn't presented properly here, you'll need to copy/paste it into the address bar to include the []'s

I've added your account into the link, so that should be it. Cheers!

wow, I am top #9 in terms of account creation. :)

Yeah you have been busy!

Hi @abh12345!

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Thanks guys!

Great analysis. I now have better analysis about this account claimed stuff. Thanks for sharing

My pleasure, thanks for reading :)

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