Account Creation Problem Can be addressed by Witnesses and Steemit Inc

Last week I published a report on the monthly new users.  It’s a regular report, however when I was analyzing the data I spotted something that is a little problem when it comes to account creation.  Changes to be made so it’s not a recurring problem and it's not to hard to make these changes.

You can read that report here

https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/may-19-new-steem-user-report-1559482192612

HF20 introduced Account Creation Tokens.  It was one of the big moves in the HF aimed at reducing the reliance on Steemit Inc to create accounts.

With these changes It was of my understanding that the Dapps would now have an opportunity to onboard new users.  This gave them the chance to be more independent of Steemit Inc and being to push and promote sign-ups to their apps.  Personally, I am disappointed that the apps are not so active in this area.  I had long thought many of them are just like steemit inc, great devs, but aren’t really interested in running a social media type site.  

Looking at the data, year to date Steemit Inc have created 80,671 account, almost 83% of all new accounts.  However I noted in the May report that in May Steemit Inc had only created 72% of accounts.  In that report, I made an assumption that Steemit Inc had fallen behind in account creation and could be sitting on a backlog of accounts.  This assumption proves to be correct as a representative from Steemit Inc confirmed they are about a week behind.

Below shows the weekly new accounts set up by Steemit Inc.  We can see the problem probably started around week 18

  

Why is this a problem?

We had a similar problem in December, where steemit inc were at an almost standstill in account creation.  We can see a spike in week 2 of the chart above, that’s Steemit inc catching up on account creation.  What resulted from this was a higher % of accounts in Jan that never became active in any way.  People get fed up waiting a lose interest.  Its such a bad start, first impressions and all that.

What caused the problem?

Simple answer – Account creation tokens.  Steemit Inc has only claimed 17% of all new account creation tokens.  I noted in the May report 

We can see Steemit Inc has claimed almost 17% of these, yet they have set up 83% of new accounts year to date.

 Simply put, Steemit Inc have used up all their account creation tokens and need to replenish.  As of now, Steemit inc only have 2254 account creation tokens , and the number of accounts per week is increasing again, which is good. But we can prevent this happening again. 

Solution:

Parameters can be changed in terms on how many Account Creation Tokens can be created.  Right now we are creating enough tokens, the problem is the wrong people are claiming them.  When I say wrong, I mean the people claiming them are not using them, just stockpiling.  So maybe a discussion needs to be had between the witnesses, steemit inc and those hoarding tokens.  I know the tokens are not transferable, but moving forward, maybe some people should back off for a while so steemit inc could grab a higher % of the new tokens created.  Maybe it’s a case that steemit inc needs to be more efficient in the collection of these tokens?

Conclusion

This does not have to be a problem if the corrective actions are taken. Witnesses have it in their powers to make changes to the parameters, people are able to work out solutions.  We have seen the impact of this problem already, no doubt there will be an impact this time around too.  Let’s try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.