Blockchain Business Intelligence: Bid Bot Spend Trend & Distribution

Details

I haven't formed a really strong opinion for or against the use of bid bots. What I feel strongly against is the unending whining about the developing trend in the use of bid bots. In my whole six months journey in Steemit I have spent 32+ SBDs just to try and see how bid bot works, its short-term benefits, and whether or not using bid bots is something I want to use in the long run. The fact that the current set up allows for its use tells us that it is an option to do so. I don't think anything can happen within the platform that we do not consent as a community; and yes, not doing anything against it is consent.

There are groups and individuals that are doing something to support their being against some aspects of bid bot usage. However, in terms of Steem Power and count, they are still a very small minority. I am doing this analysis at the height of discussions about the increasingly growing number of bid bots, their Steem Power, the amount being spent to avail such services, and its effect on the reward pool.

In this analysis I will present data-points related to the trend in terms of amount being spent on bid bots, and plain asking for upvotes from individuals by sending one's post link.

Outline

To briefly give you an idea on how the data will be presented, this analysis will be covering these topics:

• Monthly trend in terms of spend to pay or ask for upvotes from inception in March 2016 till January 20, 2018
• The top bidders in terms of amount of spend
• The top recipients in exchange for their upvotes
• A distribution trend analysis between the top 5 bid bots

Scope of Analysis

I generated the data to present the distribution and trend of spend for bid bots and asking for upvotes from individuals from inception in March 2016 to January 20, 2018 (Saturday 8:30 AM GMT). In the charts however that require showing trends, I extrapolated the January 2018 data because the data is not yet complete. I did this by dividing the actual result by 19.35 for which number of days the data is available, and multiplying the result of that by 31 which is the total number of days in January.

In the charts where I showed top bidders and bid bots, I am only showing the top 25, beyond that count will be extremely difficult to put in charts without negatively affecting the look and feel, and clarity of the information when done in excel.

Tools

I used arcange's Steem SQL Public Database to acquire the data-points related to the amount spent on asking or bidding for upvotes using the TxTransfers table.

Because my expected size of the data considering the developing trend in use of bid bots, I decided to run the query in pivot using this:

SELECT DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, timestamp), 0) AS [year_month_date_field], "from", "to", "memo", COUNT (amount), SUM (amount)
FROM TxTransfers (NOLOCK)
WHERE memo like 'http%'
GROUP BY "from", "to", timestamp, memo

I ran the query so much so that the timestamp is converted into month and year rather than date and time format. This made building the trending chart easier. I have also limited the sets of information to the ones absolutely necessary to build this analysis. Even by doing those running the query still took about an hour.

Results

As mentioned earlier, the January data was extrapolated based on the number of days the data is available. Even without extrapolating the incidents where a post link is sent via a transaction still amounted to 279,083 and the total SBD spend of 727,786, doubling the spend for the previous month. With extrapolation as shown in the chart below. The SBD spend for bidding and asking for upvotes via Transfers is likely to cross over a million.

Top 25 Bidders

It is important to note that this analysis did not deduct the amounts that ended up getting refunded when the bid bot is down or does not have enough voting power to fulfill its guarantees.

In the top 3: singhrajat is an account with sub-64 reputation level at 91 days, googlee is 88 days old at 61 reputation, and meherin at 71 days is in sub-63 reputation.

Top 20 Recepient

These are the top 20 who received SBD with a note containing a link to a post. Whether or not they performed an upvote is not covered in this analysis. The top 10 in this list are operating fully functional bid bots for certain.

Top 5 Bid Bots

This chart shows that minnowbooster is a clear leader in terms of amount received as bids. booster's and buildawhale's performance are pretty flat. We know that randowhale took a break in the months of November and December, but looks like it is back. upme is picking up from behind in the last couple of months and moved next to minnowbooster in terms of amount received in bid.

Unless the community takes a stand on use of Transfers to ask or bid for upvotes, they are likely to stay. The operators are likely to be continuing to offer such service because it is profitable for them, and the benefit they offer as an option to get anyone who is willing to pay to the trending page is a clear benefit for the bidders aside from the help it provides in raising one's reputation score.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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