Yesterday we saw that only 4 people hold ~30% of H(P)
As @dagger212 rightly pointed out it is actually a bit lower when only accounting for HP, but the point I was trying to make was that far too few hold far too much HP (and Hive) on Hive. There is no way of sugarcoating it, Hive's distribution is too concentrated (for my taste anyways). But I think we have to look at what these accounts are exactly doing. So this is what this post is about.
What are the top 20 HP accounts doing?
Have they powered up/down, have they sold Hive or bought more? How do they utilize their HP? Who is behind the account? etc. For now, let's just look at the basics. These are the accounts (and their relative share of HP):
| 1 | @freedom | 9.8% (+liquid Hive) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | @blocktrades | 7.3% |
| 3 | @alpha | 4.8% |
| 4 | @darthknight | 4.3% (+liquid Hive) |
| 5 | @theycallmedan | 2.3% |
| 6 | @blocktrades.com | 1.9% |
| 7 | @steemmonsters | 1.7% |
| 8 | @mika | 1.3% |
| 9 | @rancheloraxo | 1.2% |
| 10 | @adm | 1.1% |
| 11 | @jamesc | 1.1% |
| 12 | @elmerlin | 1.1% |
| 13 | @honey-swap | <1% |
| 14 | @themarkymark | <1% |
| 15 | @trafalgar | <1% |
| 16 | @xeldal | <1% |
| 17 | @altleft | <1% |
| 18 | @gtg | <1% |
| 19 | @roadscape | <1% |
| 20 | @pharesim | <1% |
I think it could help when we look at some basic info here:
- are they "public figures" on the chain?
- are they witnesses?
- when were they last active (account movements)?
- what kind of activity is there?
- how much is being delegated to other accounts?
| # | name | public | witness | last active | activity | delegation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | freedom | no | no | 2022 | 50k Hive sent to @appreciator | 100% |
| 2 | blocktrades | yes | yes | Recently | mainly posting/commenting | 30% |
| 3 | alpha | no | no | Recently | claiming account tokens, voting etc. | 0% |
| 4 | darthknight | no | no | 2022/2023 | commenting, powered up and sold in 2021 | 100% |
| 5 | theycallmedan | yes | no | Recently | various | 30% |
| 6 | blocktrades.com | yes | no | Recently | former exchange account for blocktrades | ~0% |
| 7 | steemmonsters | yes | no | Recently | Splinterlands account | ~0% |
| 8 | mika | no | no | Never | Sold >1M Hive in 2023; all stake delegated to @appreciator | 100% |
| 9 | rancheloraxo | no | no | Recently | commenting, voting, claiming rewards | ~15% |
| 10 | adm | no | no | Recently | voting (also downvoting), HBD.fund/hivewatcher connection | 60% |
| 11 | jamesc | no | no | 2023 | commenting, voting, not receiving any delegation rewards | 100% |
| 12 | elmerlin | no | no | Recently | various | 80% |
| 13 | honey-swap | no | no | Recently | Hive-Engine exchange | ~0% |
| 14 | themarkymark | yes | yes | Recently | various | 0% |
| 15 | trafalgar | no | no | Recently | various | 0% |
| 16 | xeldal | no | no | Recently | various, sold >100k Hive in 2023 | 0% |
| 17 | altleft | no | no | Inactive? | only using 0.06% of stake | 0% |
| 18 | gtg | yes | yes | Recently | various | 0% |
| 19 | roadscape | no | no | 2020 | only delegation rewards | 100% |
| 20 | pharesim | no | yes | Recently | various | 100% |
We can see many of these accounts are using their stake to receive delegation rewards. This means that they are not actively curating content. With these levels of Hive, this is of course understandable, although it would be better for the chain if they more actively managed their stake. We can see that appreciator is one of the biggest accounts that is receiving delegation from these and other accounts in the following chart by @dalz:
Altleft seems to be largely inactive and has perhaps forgotten about his account since he is not using his/her massive HP. There are also a couple of other accounts that seem to be inactive. Freedom is itself not very active, but using all of its stake for delegation rewards passively. An extreme case is also mika that has never been active, meaning the account never did any social transaction like commenting or blogging. It's also the account that has compared to the others sold a very big amount of Hive (or at least sent it to an exchange).
However, most accounts are active in some form, and a good share of them are also active on the frontends and interacting with the community. Only 4 of them are *witnesses and only 6 of them are what I would call "public figures" - most are rather (pseudo) anonymous. There are also 2 exchange accounts as well as one dapp/gaming account (Splinterlands).
Conclusions
What does this tell us? While this is clearly only a very superficial overview, it nevertheless seems so show that the overwhelming majority of the accounts (18/20) have never really sold any meaningful amount of Hive in the last 1-2 years, or powered down etc. They seem to be all interested in further building their stake and using their stake to curate content or using it for delegation and thus receiving a major passive income. As @edicted pointed out, we actually want whales to sell their Hive since it would contribute to the distribution of the network. Of course we do not want them to sell too much too fast (it would severely dump Hive's price), but we can only wonder why they are letting it grow this much (of course it's no secret that another bull run is around the corner).
Overall I have to again state that I am not too happy with such a skewed distribution. But with these accounts essentially letting Hive sit in their wallets, it's almost as if they are acting like a huge sink for Hive's inflation (although I have no doubt that many will sell quite heavily if Hive is at around $3+ again).
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It is a shame that many seem to delegate to just a couple of curation accounts instead of spreading the voting power around to support many of the communities on Hive who could flourish more with some support.
Theoretically a really well run curation account would be able to more fairly distribute the asset without bias. Unfortunately actually creating that type of infrastructure could prove difficult.
Yeah, I think there is no ideal way and it isn't a job I would want to do myself.
Yep just like you said what Hive really needs to decentralize is just a higher price.
None of the whales want to sell here, while many of the small accounts sell everything just to get by.
We need to flip that.
We need small accounts to earn enough to save and big accounts to sell at a profit.
All the while acquiring new users.
Easier said than done but the next cycle is on its way.
That would be great :))
Great post! Thanks :))
It's interesting that some of the whales are upvoting HBD stabilizer comments, which is great for keeping the HBD stable (https://peakd.com/hbd/@smooth/hbd-stabilizer-update-november-2023), but on the other side, it has some side effects...
When whales upvote the comment (for example https://peakd.com/@hbd.funder/re-upvote-this-post-to-fund-hbdstabilizer-20231114t045508z), author rewards go to the hbdstabilizer, which returns the rest of the tokens to DHF (if not needed, if I got this right)... Curation rewards go back to the whales who upvoted the post...
In some way, that seems like whales are growing their stake, while the author's rewards are "burned", which makes HIVE distribution not that great... It's a kind of "safe-upvoting" mechanism...
Please, correct me if my logic is wrong... ;)
Thanks for digging up the information! As a little addition, theycallmedan is a witness, indirectly, via the 3Speak account, alongside starkerz.
"We can see many of these accounts are using their stake to receive delegation rewards. This means that they are not actively curating content."
To be fair if these accounts didn't delegate and were required to be active or simply just didn't vote it would split those curation funds and reward funds up a lot more into more hands would it not? Many of these so called curation accounts vote on the same people and at very high amounts.
yeah, curation accounts are not really that great (if they are not actively being managed); yet I understand why someone with so much HP would want to delegate. Inleo curation as one example seems to work better since it is more community managed. The other whale accounts often do not have a community behind them
interesting post right there. I am disappointed by the amount that are not active but I suppose these guys are millionaire I would imagine so they have better things to do I suppose
Right now, the market is looking a bit bearish, if it doesn't break the 35 cents support, then it will go up again.