In my previous post (The Spam Problem - Some Statistics), I covered statistics about the spam in memos from 2017-01 to 2018-05. Here's an update including June and July 2018.
I analysed three values:
- The total count and size of memos
- The count and size of memos >= 200 characters (bytes)
- The count and size of memos containing the word
resteem
Results
Monthly Memo Count
| Month | Total | >=200 | Resteem |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-01 | 26188 | 5532 | 45 |
| 2017-02 | 21407 | 4254 | 13 |
| 2017-03 | 32473 | 4066 | 24 |
| 2017-04 | 27890 | 3314 | 33 |
| 2017-05 | 60713 | 11822 | 90 |
| 2017-06 | 150796 | 15279 | 278 |
| 2017-07 | 278183 | 44010 | 2313 |
| 2017-08 | 595543 | 127601 | 54784 |
| 2017-09 | 462380 | 117123 | 20681 |
| 2017-10 | 447681 | 107181 | 8005 |
| 2017-11 | 433096 | 115419 | 19039 |
| 2017-12 | 664779 | 139484 | 9805 |
| 2018-01 | 1361190 | 345875 | 27629 |
| 2018-02 | 1940340 | 709957 | 40264 |
| 2018-03 | 2148478 | 821438 | 143316 |
| 2018-04 | 2121434 | 737484 | 307399 |
| 2018-05 | 2307300 | 916292 | 431905 |
| 2018-06 | 1805053 | 728117 | 422248 |
| 2018-07 | 1760348 | 788856 | 452216 |
| Total | 16645272 | 5743104 | 1940087 |
Monthly Memo Size (bytes)
| Month | Total | >=200 | Resteem |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-01 | 2537918 | 1411550 | 4684 |
| 2017-02 | 1885462 | 1082526 | 1756 |
| 2017-03 | 2394982 | 1110444 | 2212 |
| 2017-04 | 2917862 | 1650032 | 3768 |
| 2017-05 | 5353836 | 3324722 | 13182 |
| 2017-06 | 14772056 | 5674366 | 44966 |
| 2017-07 | 34775292 | 14703050 | 582056 |
| 2017-08 | 129742178 | 81317174 | 55174380 |
| 2017-09 | 81081340 | 45195078 | 9063728 |
| 2017-10 | 76464296 | 41416694 | 3997320 |
| 2017-11 | 75714554 | 42275132 | 8328084 |
| 2017-12 | 96628432 | 45691720 | 3699114 |
| 2018-01 | 217610828 | 112216334 | 6663676 |
| 2018-02 | 374562438 | 236764808 | 9090078 |
| 2018-03 | 454936186 | 315553208 | 73810742 |
| 2018-04 | 475030746 | 334207646 | 172938556 |
| 2018-05 | 584496862 | 443932922 | 248580856 |
| 2018-06 | 526135550 | 425041576 | 274694708 |
| 2018-07 | 517803396 | 431693870 | 292509334 |
| Total | 3674844214 | 2584262852 | 1159203200 |
The memo count has stabilized in June/July. In two months, the total memo size grew by 30%, reaching 3.42GB, where the >=200 category reached 2.41GB (70% of the total) and the resteem category has doubled to 1.08GB (32% of the total). Those are net increases in two months.
Currently the blockchain file is around 136GB, so memos bigger than 200 characters taking up 2.41GB equates to 1.8% of the blockchain (resteems are roughly included in the >=200 category).
Available & Reliable. I am your Witness. I want to represent You.
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once.
Spam is really annouying I remember in the past in early years of emailing, I was surprise to get email from strangers offering something or some advertisement so you have to seach through to find a relevant email that you are really waiting for. And those spam mails were appearing so quickly even when you just created email address. Nowaday using spam-blocker you can deep breath and finally have freedom from that spam. Is something like that could be created or these spam accounts marked somhow and blocked that would make s change. While being our witness @drakos I am glad you bringing such hot topics up. It is obvious problem for others but sometimes it is very human that we try to ignore it until it interferes the whole system.
Good post alot of good excel work by you 💋
@drakos
MySQL and Excel.
I find these stats rather mind-boggling. Those spammy memos seem so tiny and inconsequential. Yet I suppose even piddly messages take up space when occurring at such high volume. 😳
That's what spam is: trash accumulating. Unfortunately on a blockchain, they can't be deleted, so we're stuck with them forever.
Ugh! I hadn't thought of that. • The downside to blockchain permanence.
On one hand it's good to have users on a chain. On the other hand if those users provide no value to us or the content consumers using harassment tactics and spam, i believe that activity should be discouraged by the community as a whole. It may be possible to use a couple different methods to do this. Say you flag these users or encourage them to stop the behavior with a replacement to get their messages across that is not on the chain.
some of those users don't post anything @gray00 they get their money by curating and not posting because if they post they get flagged can't flag the user if they don't post. And it isn't fair to flag those they resteem.
It's taking toll on the blockchain, so much for irrelevancies taking so much space the data is alarming though
Did you include memos from savings transfers?
I'm using steemsql's TxTransfers table which includes all the transfer types. That being said, the savings transfers are a tiny fraction (few MB's) and rarely have any memos. Who uses savings anyways?
The advantage of savings transfers is that you can memo spam people for free, by starting a savings withdrawal of any amount of STEEM/SBD, and then immediately cancelling it. It still costs bandwidth, though.
It doesn't seem like many people are using this, though. (I do, though)
Shhhh don't give them ideas.
It is obvious that the number of memos slightly got better, as we all know the activity of Steemians also went down since the Steem price is going down. I absolutely agree with you, to have a control over spam memos is important, we do not think about that in global way because we do not see that volume of spam on our accounts but when we think about the email boxes daily filled with spam mails that only stopped or got better after anti-spam programs them this is only decision to improve that on Steemit platform too.
Drakos you know that you could have easily use these stats to make a utopian contribution and gotten a potentially nice upvote and more exposure for this with a bit more work.. And its something id love to see get more traction.
Its stuff like this we see as inconsequential that seem to have more effect then we thought.
That trash accumulating really is getting too serious and annoying. The info is useful but is there any idea in sight on how to get rid of this? The blockchain as such (at least in my opinion) does not really provide solutions for removing anything but then again, maybe that is just an excuse we keep telling ourselves in lack of useful solutions. I refuse to think that it is impossible, maybe just not doable at the moment. A person could dream, right?
I proposed some solutions to reduce spam in the first link of this post.
Those figures boggle the brain. And probably block the drain ;)But I guess the bottom line is we are stuck with spam
On the bright side it cost them to spam us and we get a fraction of a cent which does add up. I hate memo spam though I would rather not have that fraction of a cent.
One idea was to increase the minimum memo cost.
Shit if they are spamming me I could live with more of a fraction of a cent but seriously would love a way to stop it or at least curb it down, that would likely curb it some