Checking in on STEEM's delegation bot holdings
Today, I thought it would be interesting to update my data on owned and delegated stake in order to see how bot delegation has changed in the not quite 2 months since I wrote, Programming Diary #31: Beyond Proof of Brain.
In December, as you may recall, delegation bot accounts owned roughly 4.54% of SP, and they controlled (through ownership or delegation) 37.37%. In raw numbers, they owned ~14.05 billion VESTS, and controlled ~115 billion.
December 16, 2024
What do we see today, about a month and a half later?
February 2, 2025
Today, the bot ownership percentage is slightly lower at 4.49% and the delegated control percentage is slightly higher at 37.6%. In raw numbers, however, their ownership stake has dropped from 14.05 billion VESTS to 13.8 billion, and their delegated control has remained constant at about 115 billion.
In bullets:
- Bot delegators maintained their delegations
- Bot owners powered down slowly
- Accounts with undelegated stake powered down more quickly
(this could include stake held by bot delegators and non-delegators)
What does this tell us? It tells us that the delegation bots gained percentage in the ecosystem not by growing their own share of the ecosystem, but rather because the non-bot amount of powered up STEEM shrank.
It's probably worth noting that in recent weeks there have been some unusually large powerdowns from some previously inactive accounts, so I don't think any conclusions can be drawn from these observations. However, it might be interesting to check in on this metric from time to time in the future.
Thank you for your time and attention.
As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".
Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.
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Excellent analysis.
But I would like to understand - how to distribute your STEEM on this site so that the income is maximized?
Whales pay little attention to small fish, only if they eat it.
Delegate my power to bots that support me as much as possible. But I see that they are also reducing their activity. Maybe there is a specific strong bot?
I really don't know. My personal opinion is that delegating to the paid voting services puts downward pressure on the price of STEEM, so I don't keep up with the current interest rates of the different voting services. I'm sure there are exceptions, but as a general rule, I think the reduced STEEM value that comes from their poor voting decisions outweighs any income that might be received.
I don't think plankton can affect the price. Whales do this.
Yeah, that's probably true. Lots of plankton could probably affect the price, but I don't think we really have that many. Still, I don't want to support the voting services with my SP, considering the bad voting decisions that they make.
Do you have an updated number for the percentage of STEEM holdings that are currently owned by, or delegated to voting bots?
Not up to date. I just started the data collection, but it has to check all accounts, so it'll take an hour or more. I'll post the results later.
Cool, no rush. I'm just curious about how things are looking now that quite a lot of big accounts have powered down and left (I think).
Surprisingly, not much of a change. There was a high volume of powerdowns for a month or two, but it must have balanced out somehow. To me, the current numbers look similar to previous numbers.
The bots own slightly less than 5% (~14 billion VESTS) and control about 42% (owned + delegated, ~115 billion VESTS).
Cool, thanks for that. I'm viewing 50% as the tipping point - the point of no return for Steemit to be a community again.
I don't really think there's any irreversible tipping point, but I agree that the higher the percentage the harder it is to recover.
To me, the current number is already very alarming, but I was glad to see that it's not getting dramatically worse as the months go by.
True - because the delegations can be reversed and the users can return to earning their money "fairly" again. But... when the money starts coming easily, without consequence, why would any of these users ever decide to earn less for more effort?
So without an rme or steemcurator account deciding to change things, it all feels rather irreversible.
I wonder why this is... Perhaps they're withdrawing so much that their share isn't growing... whereas smaller bloggers want to grow their account until they have enough to delegate too. And perhaps also, some significant investors have powered down and left. I'm fairly sure one of the big farming accounts did that recently but I can't remember which one.
Yeah, there are a bunch of changes that happened recently. Maybe this isn't the best time to look at it for comparison. I'm aware of at least two large delegator accounts who powered down in the last month or two (I also don't remember the account names), and one decent sized account that's powering down now. For more than a month, we saw >1 million SP per week powered down, which is 2 - 21/2 times typical levels. Also, the near-instantaneous elimination of 4+ million SBDs worth of debt threw a huge monkey-wrench in things - so that may have influenced power-up/power-down decisions.
Yeah, that's the key. A few top-tier investors could turn things around - if they choose to. Otherwise - "If you keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you've always got." ;-)
Absent that, we're left looking for a competitive solution where the incumbents have a huge head start. I think a competitive solution exists, but finding it takes lots of time, effort, resources, determination, and patience. Unfortunately, right now it seems that the people who have the requisite motivation don't have the necessary resources.