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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).

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So without an rme or steemcurator account deciding to change things

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.

The SBDs have certainly made things extremely interesting recently. The good news is that in theory, it should be easier to peg the SBD to the USD now - which might even prompt a relisting in some places (if somebody pushes for it anyway!)

I'm not sure if I've thanked you properly for the follow-votes on bullionsavers - it helped a lot and I really appreciate it. Unfortunately, that approach was cumbersome effort-wise so I prefer this alternative approach which feels more sustainable and will hopefully soften the emotional impact that downvotes can have too.