Views of the Market Share of the Steem Blockchain by Application

Stop right there. Don’t scroll down. How many different applications can you name for posting on the Steem blockchain? Can you get as high as ten? If so, I think you're doing pretty well. And how many have you used in the last thirty days? In all likelihood a maximum of two or three.

There are now more than sixteen different applications (or methods) for posting to the Steem blockchain (according to the data drawn from the steemsql database). And OK, some of these are a little niche, or even a little technical (or a lot!). But they're there. Ready when you are.

The rapidity with which the application infrastructure has grown around the Steem blockchain is nothing short of astonishing. Some of these platforms have been established for over a year; an eternity in the Steem blockchain timescale. Many others have sprung forth more recently, aided by the implementation in March of the beneficiary payment system. This update, part of Hard Fork 17, enabled third party developers to receive a share of the author payout from each post made through their application. Yet another incentive for developing around the Steem blockchain.

It seems to be bearing fruit. Let's take a look at the number of posts per day made to the Steem blockchain from applications across 2017. Steemit and eSteem, two of the longest established platforms, are still the market leaders but since June there has been a steady rise in the number of posts from other platforms.

So which platforms are capturing the market share of the blockchain? How do they all rank up? Well it depends upon which measure you use. Let's take a look at a few different approaches.

Regular Posters (4 or more posts in the last thirty days)

This is my own favourite. It represents users that are engaged in the platform, demonstrated by posting around once per week or more. Of course no measure is perfect and different platforms will attract different kinds of use. For example users may visit dtube every day and watch videos but not post, something which seems less likely with daily visitors to Steemit.

The pie chart on the left shows all the main applications, with Steemit at 79% of regular users and eSteem at 10%. The column chart on the right, which excludes Steemit and eSteem, shows busy.org, Steepshot, and dtube leading the chasing pack.

30 days measured from 25 October to 24 November - it's taken a while to put this all together!

A quick list of the more unusual apps / methods that you may not recognise:

• steemKR - A fork of Steemit (not of Steem) for the Korean market
• pysteem - I assume this is posts added with steem-python (the official python library for Steem)
• steemjs - I assume this is posts added with steem.js (the JavaScript library for the Steem blockchain)
• wp-steem - I assume this is WordPress Steem (posts published on Steem from WordPress)
• other - Mainly posts with no application marked in steemsql.

Post numbers

What about market share by total post numbers over the thirty days rather than user numbers? How does this differ?

We have the same two market leaders but now a significant difference in the chasing pack. Steem.js and "other" (mainly unknown) show very high post numbers in comparison to their user numbers. It's pretty easy to guess why, but that's a story for another day.

Post payout

Finally total post payouts over the thirty day period. This has been calculated as the sum of Author Payout, Curator Payout and Pending Payout (It does not include Beneficiary Payout which is harder to capture. Thus the figures for third party apps will be understated by a small percentage.)

Quite a different picture! While Steemit is still way ahead, busy.org, utopian.io and eSteem, are all very close together for second place. SteemKR is also showing up very well on this measure.

Of course a lot of these applications are new and still forging ahead with development. The trend for these newer apps is generally upwards and their user base and posting numbers are likely to increase with time. Overall it's a very healthy picture and an exciting time for the Steem blockchain!

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The views in this article are my own. I have no affiliation with any of the application teams. The numbers in this article have been produced by an analysis of the Steem blockchain but have received no independent verification and as such should be treated with care.

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Summaries of Results - Regular Posters and All Posters

Application	Regular posters	Ranking	All posters	Ranking
steemit	18,246	1	40,128	1
esteem	2,410	2	4,671	2
busy	778	3	1,598	3
steepshot	371	4	1,016	5
dtube	358	5	1,285	4
dmania	210	7	491	8
other	211	6	495	7
utopian	142	8	511	6
zappl	104	9	370	9
steemkr	84	10	157	10
streemian	75	11	114	14
chainbb	45	12	148	11
bescouted	43	13	72	16
wp-steem	42	14	86	15
pysteem	41	15	128	12
dsound	24	16	116	13
steemjs	14	17	21	17
total	23,198		51,407

Summaries of Results - Post numbers and Payouts Generated

Application	Posts	Ranking	Payouts Generated	Ranking
steemit	466,729	1	1,080,006	1
esteem	49,907	2	45,821	4
busy	12,716	5	52,632	2
steepshot	5,068	8	10,221	7
dtube	6,267	6	7,545	8
dmania	5,608	7	2,377	13
other	20,221	4	14,356	6
utopian	2,137	11	48,975	3
zappl	1,970	12	2,725	11
steemkr	1,417	14	14,719	5
streemian	5,000	9	4,373	10
chainbb	1,058	15	2,490	12
bescouted	800	16	684	15
wp-steem	1,731	13	112	17
pysteem	4,864	10	7,505	9
dsound	342	17	602	16
steemjs	33,193	3	823	14
total	619,028		1,295,965

Methodology and Tools for Analysis

Raw data was obtained through sql queries of the Comments table in steemsql (thank you as always @arcange!) using Valentina Studio.
Data was analysed in Numbers, the mac spreadsheet tool.
Data was obtained across all of 2017 for the first chart, and from 25 October to 24 November for the thirty day period.

Questions

If you have any questions or spot any errors please do not hesitate to leave a comment.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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