Steemit Business Intelligence: Delegation Users & Trends

Since I made a tutorial contribution on how to delegate, update delegation, and undelegate Steem Power using SteemConnect a couple of weeks ago, I've been curious about the utilization of the feature. As I mentioned in the tutorial, there are a multitude of reasons for delegating Steem Power; supporting a cause that you believe the platform needs, for profit, or as contest prize. There are known Steemit Inc accounts that delegate to amazing initiatives like Sndbox and Utopian, there are voting bid bots that buy and sell leased Steem Power, and there's the like of Spotlight that gives temporary delegation as a prize for contests.

I used arcange's Steem SQL to obtain the data presented in this analysis. I will present four key things here; top delegator by vesting shares, top delegatee by vesting shares, utilization trend of the delegation feature by month, and some additional details on delegation to three accounts I am most interested in (Utopian-io, Sndbox, and MinnowSupport).

Top 20 Delegators

The top delegators are misterdelegation and freedom with only a slim margin of 12,800++ delegated Steem Power difference. blocktrades with its recent Steem Power lease service shoot up to over 4,000,000 delegated Steem Power. steem's Steem Power delegation are mostly for account creation, and currently delegating to 228,400 unique accounts. ned now only has 2 active delegation from his own account 1,000,000++ Steem Power to utopian-io, and 500,000++ Steem Power to surpassinggoggle.

Here is the data in table form with conversion from vest to Steem Power using current conversion rates.

delegator	Delegated vesting_shares	Delegated Steem Power	Count of Delegation
misterdelegation	11,620,664,790	5,661,541	4
freedom	11,600,000,000	5,651,473	19
blocktrades	8,414,681,712	4,099,599	487
steem	6,470,265,325	3,152,287	228400
ned	3,094,413,610	1,507,586	2
jamesc	2,397,400,987	1,168,004	3
minority-report	1,965,914,933	957,786	12
xeldal	1,660,517,165	808,997	20
jamesc1	1,598,267,324	778,669	2
fyrstikken	1,473,531,967	717,899	3
riverhead	1,436,956,141	700,079	1
roadscape	1,207,883,577	588,476	13
steemed	1,036,775,521	505,113	1
engagement	821,167,119	400,069	1
smooth	759,527,938	370,039	10
arhag	754,755,884	367,714	4
fulltimegeek	724,860,993	353,149	42
jaewoocho	640,000,000	311,805	64
wackou	620,000,000	302,061	6
systema	615,776,447	300,004	1
others	14,572,619,194	7,099,721	3994

Top 20 Delegatees

utopian-io is at the top of this list having received 3,700,000++ Steem Power in delegation from a total of 96 delegators, followed by with 3,100,000++ Steem Power delegated by misterdelegation, then buildawhale with 1,900,000++ delegation from blocktrades, minority-report, fminer05, and thedelegator.

After the undelegation of ned, sweetsssj is still holding significant influence with 690,000++ delegated Steem Power from blocktrades, systema, and temet-nosce. surpassinggoogle kept his 500,000++ delegated Steem Power from ned.

Here is the data in table form with conversion from vest to Steem Power using current conversion rates.

delegatee	vesting_shares Receieved	Steem Power Received	Count of Delegator
utopian-io	7,601,959,497	3,703,644	96
trendings-grace	6,420,393,446	3,127,990	1
buildawhale	4,046,621,714	1,971,498	4
appreciator	3,882,986,076	1,891,775	6
steemcleaners	2,175,548,899	1,059,919	2
booster	1,470,000,000	716,178	1
kpine	1,436,956,141	700,079	1
sweetsssj	1,418,775,300	691,222	3
blocktrades	1,390,970,696	677,675	15
peaceandlove	1,120,982,273	546,138	4
sndbox	1,044,082,480	508,673	1
steemed-proxy	1,036,775,521	505,113	1
surpassinggoogle	1,029,059,275	501,353	1
rocky1	1,000,029,943	487,211	2
jamesbarraclough	1,000,029,773	487,210	2
acidyo	914,355,321	445,470	4
upmyvote	821,167,119	400,069	1
teamsteem	799,133,662	389,335	1
good-karma	799,133,662	389,335	1
canadian-coconut	799,133,662	389,335	1
others	33,277,886,164	16,212,851	232941

Delegation Utilization Trend Per Month

There is generally an uptrend in delegation activities, please note that the data used for this chart unlike all other chart in this analysis is unfiltered. Here I wanted to show all delegation related activities (initial delegation, updates to existing delegation, and undelegation. The huge fluctuations in activities are mainly driven by steem in updating delegation from the initial delegation from sign ups.

Utopian-io Delegation Details

Over 87% of utopian-io's Steem Power is from three major delegators; freedom, misterdelegation, and ned. Recently though, there's been increasing support from individuals pouring in to delegate a portion of their Steem Power to utopian-io in support of their efforts to reward open-source contributors.

Two months into existence utopian-io is attracting a lot of attention, and I feel the same will continue growing over time. They have also received 50,000 liquid Steem from ned to facilitate sign ups directly from utopian.io. This would likely drive open-source contributors from outside Steemit into the platform.

Sndbox Delegation Details

There is surprisingly not much to analyze using this data. I feel efforts like sndbox deserve more attention and delegation. sndbox supports the development of creatives which is at the core of Steemit.

Disclosure: I am a sndbox member.

MinnowSupport Delegation Details

Unless you are a veteran blogger or vlogger, a published author, a social media celebrity, a quite famous anarchist; you would have likely had the same struggle as I did initially in getting noticed. MSP helped me greatly in sticking it up with Steemit by making sure I will have no post with $0. This is the same reason why one of my very first delegations is with MSP.

So I am happy to know that unlike the two account above, the top three delegators of minnowsupport constitutes no more than 38% of their total delegated Steem Power. There is currently 231 active delegation to minnowsupport including my menial contribution.

Analysis Steps

I had to do this analysis in multiple steps, the primary reason is my lack of experience in running SQL queries, next to that is the way the data is presented.

Step 1 - Get the Raw Data

I believed that the data in the TxDelegateVestingShares table may be more than that of the TxLimitOrders, and TxAccountWitnessProxies tables, but it will still be less than the other data intensive tables. I thought that the entries in TxDelegateVestingShares table will still fit in an excel spreadsheet, and it worked. Using 2013 a Microsoft Excel:

1. I opened a blank spreadsheet
2. I clicked on Data to access the Data Tab
3. I clicked on From Other Sources from the Get External Data section of the Data Tab
4. I chose From SQL Server from the drop down menu
5. I logged in to arcange's public SQL database with (Server: sql.steemsql.com, User: steemit, Password: steemit)
6. I chose TxDelegateVestingShares from the list of tables
7. Clicked on Finish button
8. Clicked Ok

I filtered the delegator column to my own account to understand the structure of the data based on my own experience

As shown on the photo to the right, a delegator can update existing delegation multiple times, or undelegate from the initial delegation. This analysis will be skewed unless the last delegation entry is captured ignoring all earlier delegation entries.

Step 2 - SQL Query

I ran this query to restructure the arrangement of the entries according to the timestamp, listing the most recent ones first.

Select
delegator, delegatee, vesting_shares, timestamp
From
TxDelegateVestingShares
group by delegator, delegatee, vesting_shares, timestamp
Order by
timestamp desc

In the photo to the left you will see that after running the above query, the entries are now listed in descending order based on timestamp. This still doesn't fix the issue of multiple entries, and when analyzed this way, my delegation to qurator will still return the original delegation count when it should now be zero, my delegation to steemph.manila will return an inflated figure adding my original delegation and the reduced delegation.

Step 3 - Removing Duplicates

1. I copied the entire table into a new sheet
2. Kept the entire table selected/highlighted
3. Clicked on the Data Tab
4. Clicked on Remove Duplicates from the Data Tool section
5. Selected delegator and delegatee from the pop-up menu, and clicked ok

After doing those steps, then filtering the delegator column to my own account (steemitph), you will see as shown in the photo to the right that the table is now listing only my unchanged delegation to minnowsupport, my reduced delegation to steemph.manila, and zero delegation to qurator.

From here, I used the excel pivot, filter, and chart functions to create the analysis. Delegation is a powerful feature of the platform, not only because minnows like myself benefit from it directly, but also because it shows the world even those who are observing from outside the platform what Steemit is about. While doing the analysis, I was blown away by how minnows like myself are delegating power to minnowsupport acknowledging the power of what it does for the community. The overwhelming support of Steemit Inc and multiple whales, and minnows alike to utopian-io shows how Steemians respond to bringing a powerful idea to a revolutionary movement. All these give me comfort that we are in the right track. We are not only mining Steem with our minds, we do just as much with our hearts, and as I posted a couple of months back; I still believe that Steem is a Currency of Love.

---

Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

---