Whalestake Distribution Analysis : Are there Big Fish in this Little Pond?
I’ve been poking around the Whaleshares platform on and off for a couple of months now. I see a lot of potential there with some really good people involved, but I’ve also been a bit wary. I don’t want to be investing too much time in a new platform without being totally convinced it’s not just going to go down the same road and have the same problems as other platforms of its type. It’s another Delegated Proof of Stake social media type blockchain but one of the things I kept hearing about Whaleshares was that the token distribution was better (even fairer) than others. So I wanted to have a closer look to see what the distribution really looks like because I know firsthand that Whales always carry a lot of influence and they can set the behavioural standard on any platform – even a decentralised one.
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The first thing I noticed was that almost half (49.95%) of the total Circulating Supply (made up of Whalestake plus WLS) is in liquid WLS form. In other words it’s not “Powered Up” into Whalestake that can be used for voting. Most of this is held in the @wls account which was used for the initial airdrop distribution (yet left unclaimed?) but there is also a decent chunk in the @devfund account (which is presumably used to pay developers) and the @rudex account (which I think is used for the Bitshares exchange gateway). I did ask if there were any plans for the @wls account during the Whaleshares Hangout this week and was told it’s still being figured out. So for the purposes of this analysis today I’ll just focus on the Whalestake component that is “Powered Up” for now and I'll revisit the liquid WLS another time.
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The next thing I wanted to try and figure out was what sort of range I should be plotting against. I was tempted to use a logarithmic scale but most of my readers are probably not eggheads like me so I’ve broken the scale up manually and given the users some classifications / groups that readers would be a bit more familiar with conceptually. I realise I’ll be opening myself up to some criticism here so I’ll just ask anyone out there who objects to the way I’ve drawn up the groups to please keep it civil and constructive. This is what I came up with in tabular form.
Putting it into a chart it looks a bit more digestible and there are no big surprises here. In fact it looks like a pretty normal curve.
The largest Powered-Up Mega Whale controls about 5.61% of the Voting Whalestake and the 25 Whales I’ve classified here control about 43.63% of the Voting Whalestake if you added them all together. Throw in the 24 Orcas on top and that gets up to 57.08% of the Voting Whalestake being held by 1.37% of the platform users. Now that might seem like a lot but if you have a look around that IS better than I’ve seen elsewhere.
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It is still very early days of course and I know the Whaleshares platform will evolve over time but this does look like a reasonable starting point and at the moment there appears to be a healthy middle class. The Whalestake distribution is something I now will keep an eye on to see if there are any positive or negative trends that develop and with this sort of data analysis I can quantify those trends. With a high inflation rate feeding a generous reward pool, the key variable for me will be whether the Whales and Orcas on Whaleshares use their stake to curate properly and add value to their ecosystem or whether they use it to sell their votes, self-vote and circle jerk vote swap their way clear of everyone else as seems to have happened elsewhere.
Interesting. Thank you for your analysis of whalkeshares. Very helpful indeed
I now looked how to open an account - out of curiosity - and if I am correct it requires steps A-I that is 9 steps and a fee via an (exotic?) exchange. Also the language in the FAQ is abrabracadabra for "normal" people like me with an academic background that is.
look at it …
Whaleshares FAQ
PLEASE BE ADVISED:
The account creation/claim is ONLY open for BTS accounts that held WHALESHARE, BTS, BROWNIE.PTS on/before the snapshop date. (Bitshares Block 29222369 at 2018-08-01 03:18:51 UTC)
Other BTS accounts (not in the sharedrop) attempting to create will be rejected and the system will automatically refund the WHALESHARE tokens sent at the end of the claim period (September 15, 2018).
Successful claims will apply your sharedrop as vested WHALESTAKE and the claim closed. The claim fee WHALESHARE tokens for successful claims are not returned or refunded.
It might be early material you are reading there @goldrooster because account creation is open to all now just by going through the main splash page at https://whaleshares.io I believe account approvals are currently being done by Witnesses so if your a real person (not a bot) then getting an account is pretty easy now. You don't need anything to do with Bitshares.
As for claiming the Sharedrop, I think the window for that is closed and you can't claim at the moment. The last liquid WLS transfer from the @wls account was 21 days ago. I am not sure if they are going to open it back up at some point - I guess that's one of the questions about what to do with the WLS still sitting in that account.
Hit me up on Discord if you need any specific help and I'll do what I can. Alternatively the Whaleshares Discord has a #new-account-support channel that is very helpful.
What makes you hopeful?
I'm hopeful because I've seen firsthand that there are atleast a couple of whales who are working hard to engage with the community and reward quality content with proper curation. There are also a few whales who give away "Whaletokens" for contests and other community stuff and these tokens can be used in exchange for whale votes.
At the end of the day, while they may be only a minority - There ARE some Whales who are distributing rewards so there is some potential for upward mobility on the platform and that gives me some hope. I have scored a couple of decent shares (votes) though I am still very much a Minnow there.
I still can't even work out out what one WLS is even worth in real money.
The market for WLS is still pretty small so it's a bit illiquid with a buy sell spread of about 1.8 to 2.3 BTS which equates to about 13.5 to 17.3 US cents at todays (depressed) prices. This is partly due to restrictions on the size of power downs so most vested stake remains vested in these early days. You can see the market for WLS HERE
One of the other questions I asked at the Whaleshares Hangout was whether WLS would be listed on coinmarketcap.com and that is something they are working on. I calculate the market cap as close to $4 million USD which would put Whaleshares around rank 500 and that would make them worthy of listing. There is some costs involved with the listing and they need a certain daily trade volume to qualify. It'll happen in time but it's still a bit too early.
Thanks. I couldn't find anything on their price, which made me suspicous. The no power down thing is also suspicious, mind you.
There is a Power Down but it's just limited to (I think) 13% of total Whalestake and this % is gradually increasing. It's a stability mechanism to gradually open up supply of liquid WLS as the ecosystem grows. It makes sense and seems to be working to keep the price of WLS relatively stable so far.
I used the term circle jerk in a conversation with a friend recently and then had to explain it! How embarrassing.
Roflmao
I'm not familiar with that expression
It's like the acronym lol. I found your comment funny.
Laugh my ass off?
Correct
I was recommended to check out whaleshares. Hard to know what to invest the time in. So many out there now; QuinQuin, Bearshars, Ono,Whaleshares, Howdoo, UUNIO, Weku, SocialX to name a few.