Blockchain Business Intelligence: Account Creation Trend & Delegation Changes

Details

I have been seeing posts about how account creation seems to be increasing in rate, and how the know account creation account of Steemit Inc (steem) has been removing earlier delegation to a point that the new users are kept with 15 Steem Power. This means that if a user have at least 15 SP of his/her own, steem removes the earlier delegated Steem Power altogether. In this contribution from crokkon he mentioned that between November 2017 till mid-January 2018, two million Steem Power returned to steem. I believe that there is some relation between the increased rate of account creation, and the undelegation, that led to this contribution.

In this contribution, I took a closer look at the trend of account creation in relation with the permanent cost of account creation (Fee), and the temporary cost of account creation (Steem Power Delegation).

Outline

Here are the thing that will be covered in this analysis.

• 23 Months Trend of Account Creation & The Overall Cost Associated with it (Fee & SP Delegation)
• Quarter on Quarter Growth in Account Creation, The Average Fee, & Average Delegation Spend from Steemit Inc. To Create Steemit Accounts
• Quarter on Quarter Growth in Account Creation, The Average Fee, & Average Delegation Spend from Individuals, Paid Sign Up Services, and Communal Accounts To Create Steemit Accounts
• Distribution of Account Creation Between Steemit Inc., Individuals, Paid Sign Up Services, and Communal Accounts.
• Individual Distribution Between Steemit Inc. Accounts, Paid Sign Up Services, and Communal Accounts.
• Top 25 Non-Steemit Inc. Account Creators Sorted by Count of Account Created

Scope of Analysis

I generated the data to present the trend and distribution of payout between posts and comments from inception in March 2016 to February, 4 2018 (Sunday 12NN GMT). I removed the February 2018 data when presenting trends since that month will only have three and a half days worth of data. I included it however for overall distribution, and quarterly trends.

In the quarterly trends I am calling out that the data represented is only 38.33% of the first quarter of 2018.

Tools

I used arcange's Steem SQL Public Database to acquire the data-points related to the account creator, count of accounts created, fees, and Steem Power delegation in the TxAccountCreates table.

I used this query to generate the data:

SELECT DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, timestamp), 0) AS [year_month_date_field], creator, new_account_name, fee, delegation
FROM TxAccountCreates
GROUP BY timestamp, creator, new_account_name, fee, delegation

I used Microsoft Power BI to plot the data in charts and tables.

Results

This chart shows that from March 2017, there was a changed implemented for the cost of account creation; from permanent cost via Fee to a combination of Fee and temporary cost via Steem Power Delegation. Notice that in January 2018 the count of accounts created was more than twice as much of those in December, but the delegated Steem Power was only 50% more.

Average Fee & Delegation for Accounts Created By steem

When my account was toward the end of July 2017, I remember getting 27++ Steem Power Delegation. This changed to about 15 Steem Power for accounts created in the middle of January 2018. The Fee has been flat at .50 since Q3 of 2017.

Average Fee & Delegation for Accounts Created By Anyone Other Than steem

The Steem Power delegation between Q4 2017 and Q1 2018 has remained pretty flat. There is a continuous reduction in Fees however since Q1 2017.

Account Creation Distribution (All Time)

A great majority of accounts are still created by Steemit Inc. As shown in the below chart however, there are efforts however to make sign up easier via Paid Sign Up Services. We know about blocktrades recently starting a Sign Up Service, and it looks like it will catch up with annonsteem soon. There are also communal accounts who have started creating accounts for users in their own communities. The biggest in terms of count of accounts created is China's cnsteem, followed by Indonesia's promosi, and the Philippines' steemph.

Top 25 Account Creators (Non-Steemit Inc.)

The Top 1,2, and 5 are known Paid Sign Up Services. The Top 3 is a Communal Account, and the Top 4 is an Individual.

Conclusion

With only 38.33% available in Q1 of 2018, and already exceeding the count of accounts created in the last quarter of 2017, we are set to more than double the rate of account creation this quarter. Even with the reduced delegation of new sign-ups, the influence 15 Steem Power delegation provides now is still more than the 27++ Steem Power delegation I got in July 2017. With the implementation of only keeping 15 Steem Power for new users, and reducing delegation on an on-going basis until the users are able to build their own Steem Power, Steemit Inc. is going to be able to sustain this rate of account creation. The cost in the native currency through delegation can further reduce as Steem appreciates in price, and the value of Steem Power in terms of influence appreciates with it.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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