Where are the Votes (SP) going?

in OCD4 years ago (edited)

I've been playing with some SQL script for the past couple of hours, trying to find out who's been collecting the voting SP over the past 7 days.

The lists below come with a major caveat in that the right column on each list assumes that every vote cast was cast when the voter was at 100% voting power. Obviously that is unlikely to be the case, but it should serve as a reasonable figure to order by.

Also, downvotes have not been knocked off the totals.

I have the full lists in Excel for anyone who is interested. They didn't present to well in markup and that is the reason for the images.

So that's the top 100 'voter to author'. As you would probably expect, burnpost makes plenty of appearances from the larger accounts, but there are a couple of interesting names being supported often by some large accounts.

The next chart is the complete list, pivoted by author and ordered by total SP voted on their content over the past 7 days. Again, the total VP assumes that each vote was made when the voters VP was at 100%.



This should pretty much match up with the top 7 day earners.

@burnpost, the STEEM sink, has almost 4 times the total of the 2nd account in the list.

Three of my favourite authors are in that list.

And the rest is up to you to analyse :)

Cheers

Asher



select a.name as voter, (a.vesting_shares-delegated_vesting_shares+received_vesting_shares)*509.421/1000000 as sp, v.author
,count(v.voter+v.author) as votes, sum(v.weight) as weight, CONVERT(DECIMAL(16,2), sum((v.weight)+0.0)/10000) as 'same as 100% votes', 
((a.vesting_shares-delegated_vesting_shares+received_vesting_shares)*509.421/1000000)*sum(v.weight)/10000 as total_SP_voted_with
from txvotes v
inner join accounts a on v.voter = a.name
where v.weight > 0
and v.timestamp > getdate()-7 -- number of days to scan
group by a.name, (a.vesting_shares-delegated_vesting_shares+received_vesting_shares)*509.421/1000000,  v.weight, v.author
having 
((a.vesting_shares-delegated_vesting_shares+received_vesting_shares)*509.421/1000000)*sum(v.weight)/10000 > 200000 -- 200,000 or more in SP
 order by ((a.vesting_shares-delegated_vesting_shares+received_vesting_shares)*509.421/1000000)*sum(v.weight)/10000 desc

Sort:  

Interesting stats. We can see that a lot of big accounts support the potato and burn posts. I guess they think those do some good. It's also clear that some people are making a lot more than most of us could hope to. I am sure some of that is down to fishing for curation rewards, but that's the way of things. At least the curation projects are helping spread the rewards better than previously.

Cheers. Have a !BEER.

Yeah, while burnpost isn't for everyone, the rewards (or lack of) mean there should be more on the table going forward.

Some accounts are doing really well!

It is largely because of much of the rest of the list that @burnpost gets a lot of its support.

If reward payouts were efficiently going to true influencers or successful onboarding, those of us supporting burnpost would see a lot less reason to vote that way. But in fact because much of the rewards goes to enrich a few people with little obvious systemic benefit, why not instead take the win in lower inflation?

I've said numerous times that I would prefer to (and sometimes do) vote for truly compelling content and engagement over burnpost, but as long as that isn't what is happening, I proudly support burnpost to help retain investor value for Steem until we successfully revamp, pivot, or organically get our house in order.

I'll support the good content for what little influence I can have. Those who concentrate on maximising their short term returns may be harming Steem. It desperately needs to grow and attract real influencers. Then the price will increase and I'd rather have 25,000 Steem at $1 than 100,000 at 1c.

If reward payouts were efficiently going to true influencers or successful onboarding, those of us supporting burnpost would see a lot less reason to vote that way

I don't get that. Much of the rewards goes to enrich those few people either way, voting on @burnpost doesn't change that. On the contrary, by lowering the inflation what they earn is theoretically worth even more. And not giving out rewards to the tail is deadly for onboarding in my view.

I'm aware that curation projects which spread votes aren't able to vote solely on exceptional content, but at least those votes dilute the earnings of the people on the list and motivate newcomers to stay around a bit longer.

//edit:
After letting my thoughts propell around it a bit more I feel even stronger against the burnposts.
Using the golden rule/categorical imperative, I wondered what would happen if everyone acted a certain way:

  • self voting: inflation is high, stays with investors
  • burnposts: inflation is lower, but still stays with investors
  • delegate to projects: inflation is distributed, the more projects/curators are active the better

Of course it's a (maybe a bit overly) simplified approach, but to me it feels like the difference between the first and the second isn't too big, mainly because investors are rewarded for the burns. It doesn't help with growth, and that's the function I see behind curation rewards.

Lowering the inflation that way benefits everyone who's already involved, be it an investor or an established author or a spammer, but it hurts the tail we need to grow.

I don't agree that reducing inflation benefits investors really. It is neutral.

There are basically three classes of usage rewards/inflation can be allocated to:

  1. Positive (spending $1 results in >$1 contributed back to the value of the system)
  2. Neutral (spending $1 results in exactly $1 contributed value)
  3. Negative (spending $1 results in <$1 contributed value)

Burnpost is #2 (but see note at the bottom for an exception), it doesn't help or hurt anyone.

Now, since the pool is short term zero sum, when one upvotes in any of these categories, it reduces the others. But now you have to consider not only aggregate value but marginal value. This gets kind of complicated, so if there is enough interest, we can dive deeper into it elsewhere.

Ultimately, I think there should be an equilibrium where voters have to choose between #1 and #2; unless the system is very broken #3 should be driven to almost zero. The choice between #1 and #2 depends on marginal value, not total value. And FWIW, I do not think we are in a situation where #3 has been driven to almost zero, which is to say I consider the rewarding function to be very broken, still.

To that point, most of the recipients on this list, who post day after day and get rewarded day after day either by self-voting, vote trading, bought votes, or whatever other manner, are not the tail. That is to say, again, I do not believe whatsoever that #3 has been driven to near-zero. The system is in fact, still pretty broken (though somewhat less so than before EIP).

Some other points of (mild) disagreement.

  1. Self-voting does not stay with investors (plaural), and is very, very harmful. It stays with the particular investor (singular) who does it, paid for almost entirely by the rest of investors. This is a key difference. When one investor self-votes, other investors are now in a prisoners' dilemma situation where they already see the other prisoner defecting. This ultimately forces all investors into choosing between self-voting (and vote-selling, vote-trading, etc. which are all equivalent) or suffering losses, and was essentially the path we were on prior to EIP. The system then collapses, with no rewards left for the tail. By contrast, voting for burnpost is perfectly compatible with the same or other voters also voting for a category 1 tail, without anyone needing to take losses to do it. Also, this perfectly fits with your model of "what if everyone did this?". Everyone can make some votes for burnpost and some votes for category 1 contributions (when seeing an opportunity for marginal gain there), and all would be fine.
  2. Delegating to 'projects' is not a panacea whatsoever. Some of them might be good, but there have surely been, and continue to be, 'projects' which are ultimately disguised self-voting (i.e. very, very harmful), or just dumb ideas which don't add value.

Final note: In the situation when SBD is worth more than $1, burnpost shifts into category 1. That's because 1 STEEM gets converted into 1 STEEM worth of SBD (assuming SBD to be worth $1) via the payout code, which then is traded by burnpost into more than 1 STEEM, which is then burned (returned to the system/stakeholders). In this instance, there is a net gain. That doesn't mean there won't be other potential payouts which are category 1, value adding to a greater degree (and therefore more worthy of votes than burnpost), but the bar gets higher and higher as the value of SBD increases above $1.

I agree mostly, #3 is the problem and that's what work needs to focus on. What puzzles me is the reasoning that users choose #2 because of that. Clearly the choice should be #1, or not?

With projects I meant trustworthy curation groups. In total there is a quite huge number of genuine curators here, which would be happy to spread more towards the tail.

I got into a lot of detail in my reply to azircon's question, and also mentioned the huge difference between #2 and #3 (your 1.) in the real environment. #2 benefits investors as a group over those who could've received the vote instead. It just doesn't hurt investors choosing #1.

A mixed scenario actually works well "if everybody did it" and #3 was solved. At least as long as the outgoing votes aren't mostly self-votes or votes for friends then (which seems to be the case for quite a few people voting on burnposts now).

And fully agree with the final note :D

What puzzles me is the reasoning that users choose #2 because of that. Clearly the choice should be #1, or not?

Well #1 has to exist (which requires creativity and initiative on the part of the posters, so you can't assume infinite quantities at all times) and be identifiable. Certainly some of that does. I vote for it. It also in many cases (not all) has a finite capacity: If a post is already fully rewarded to the extent of its value by the time you considering voting on it, you can't vote for it, even though you might entirely support it getting the rewards it is already voted to receive. (An exception would be posts which are raising funds for something with a large or essentially unlimited budget.) This gets into the marginal vs. total question I alluded to earlier.

"Not" (by which I guess you mean not voting) is only a good choice if you think that your vote for none-of-the-above is causing more marginal harm by reducing rewards from #1 than marginal benefit by reducing rewards from #3. This is obviously a judgment call. If you think everything is working great then clearly you would have no reason to vote for #2. But IMO that's rather absurd given Steem's lack of success on almost every front: A system which effectively allocates budget to where it can do the most good and is most effective in drawing value into Steem should be akin to a superpower, particularly when few competitors have this. We're clearly not doing that.

In an ideal world: #3 wouldn't exist (or would be fully downvoted) and #2 would only be a sensible vote if everything in #1 were already fully rewarded. But we don't live in an ideal world, at least this blockchain and its rewarding system certainly does not. #3 routinely does not get downvoted because of too much drama, too much unrewarded effort, etc.

Also, most of these judgments are subjective in terms of what constitutes value and such, and that's okay. I am less concerned about people disagreeing on what or where is the positive value in good faith than people gaming the system to extract value from it or people not downvoting when the latter is going on (which then ensures it will, because there are always people who will take advantage when they can). That's a systemic problem here. Since we don't have a solution, none-of-the-above (i.e. burnpost) goes up in value from where it would otherwise be if we had more effective downvoting.

Likewise for curation initiatives. Sure there might be some excellent curation initiatives but I don't really see a good way to figure out what is good and what is not (is there anyone curating the curators?), and for the most part I am suspicious of them given past experiences and some of what I still see today. Finally, most of them don't downvote or don't downvote effectively, which is yet another reason for me to not support them and retain control over my own vote power instead. Still, if someone is able to convince me that this or that curation initiative is doing a great job recognizing value, then I'm open to being sold on delegating to it. That doesn't happen by default. When I support burnpost, I see that as an case of "do no harm" relative to delegating to a curation initiative that I don't know is helping or hurting.

Finally, I'm also comfortable that voters can decide how much of the pool should go to none-of-the-above. If burnpost gets no rewards for a long time I'll probably stop posting it. If it gets small rewards or large rewards, IMO that is just people making a budgetary decision.

I'm mostly on your side that it isn't harmful, and definitely not in relation to #3. I see a small harm when good authors simply get overlooked because it's convenient to be neutral and vote on burnpost. It's not motivating for them to see that it's mostly #3 and #2 out there, so everyone going #1 instead counts.

I intentionally avoided mentioning it by name, but
regarding curation projects I'm really happy how @curangel works out. While slip ups happen, the general allocation is pretty good in my view. It's public info which curator curated what, so if one of them goes bad it's hopefully recognized sooner than later. Votes also aren't happening instantly and there are a few people checking the queue from time to time. Downvotes are used and delegators can decide where their share of those goes (which isn't used enough, it would be nice to spread those further).
We mostly have very small delegators though, the original idea of giving an option besides autovoting to bigger stakeholders didn't go off. I also published the code so people could set up their own group if they prefer to have better control over who curates with their stake.

This is something I discussed with @smooth a lot but couldn’t really get a consensus. Your 3 options: can it be proven/addressed with data?

Loading...

Can you do a top author list of downvotes received next? :P

yes please.

Should be possible with a slight change to the query :)

Nice work!

I wonder how the distribtion across the top 100 has changed post HF.

I've had a few goes at this and it's a tricky one. Ignoring names makes it a bit easier, so comparing the earnings of the top 100 over a set period prior to the fork v's recently is probably the best bet.

I'll see, this stuff takes hours of titting about! :D

How do I get on that list jk 😂😂😂😂

If you find out let me know! :P

Nice one Asher. What you ideally want is the rshares on the votes, but SteemSQL doesn't seem to provide that. I've had to pull apart API responses to get that info.

I think this is pretty indicative of where the big "relationships" are though.

yeah rshares would be the gold, a total nightmare for average scripters though!

vests is possible but just don't make sense to most (including me) with the numbers being so big.

It's good enough to see where the money is I think, cheers :)

Check my reply to @buggedout about rshares

rshares are available in SteemSQL! You will find them in Comments..active_votes.

Unfortunately, it's a big JSON string you have to parse. Not very handy nor resource-friendly for big queries.

Yes, I have seen it there in JSON though if I have to write a script to extract it I may as well use the API. I should have been more accurate - the data is there but not really SQL extractable / queryable.

It's extractable/queryable, but you will have to play with SQL JSON functions. Challenging, isn't it? 😉

Perhaps I will try it if I ever decide to pay for the access again. Unlikely, but never say never ;)

The short answer is 'yes'.

A look at that column for my depth=0 posts shows some empty fields, some text starting with

[{"voter":"bleepcoin","weight":462,"rshares":3874889785,"percent":100,"reputation":0,"time":"2019-02-13T15:19:00"} ......

and some starting with

[{"percent":1900,"reputation":"90169188750593","rshares":"91937688256","time":"2019-02-14T20:29:45","voter":"mammasitta","weight":9617},{"percent":3300,"reputation":"90455657914116","rshares ......

One for when I have a weekend spare :)

Oh, you have some weekend spare. You lucky boy! ;)

wow what a well detailed statistics,,good post from you...

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@burnpost, the SBD sink

Minor correction. @burnpost isn't a SBD sink. For one thing, SBD isn't currently being paid out as rewards, only STEEM. And if it were (as perhaps soon), @burnpost puts the SBD back on the internal market instead of burning it, and burns the STEEM instead.

In fact @burnpost is only a STEEM sink, not SBD.

@sbdpotato is the SBD sink. It is also on the list, but significantly smaller.

Hi @smooth, thanks for the clarification, I'll correct the post.

There we are curation in action. :) Naughty grin.

There is certainly some curation going on :)

Interesting post! Thanks

I am not in the list. Rigged!

Apologies, I'll find a way next time - perhaps for the downvote list? :D

Great! Thank you.

Now if we could get who on that list is only here to maximize their btc holdings, that would be great.

Just checked my BTC wallet, anddddd, empty :)

Only 99 98 more to go!

Not @burnpost!

Lol, see, it's not sooo hard.

Have we had enough guff from those that only dump to btc and don't build their accounts, yet?

Very little trickle-down I guess its to be expected with the funnel being so small and to curate effectively takes real-time and commitment. You'd think the recipients of all this inflation would be keen to pass it on, but hardly any of them even curate, that so-called passing it on effect died at the first hurdle lol

It is by design, a long tail.

Large accounts like @ocdb and @curangel are notable in their absence. There is at least some trickle there.

I don't really like those upvotes going for burnposts, inflation is high, true, but at least it decentralizes the SP between more people decreasing the bad effect that the early mining had and making the blockchain truly decentralized, burning that inflation actually prevents the decentralization... but it's their stake after all, so I guess it's their choice, maybe it's a good thing, if those big accounts weren't burning the big amounts that we can see in those stats the price would probably go down by way too much...

Now you got to do one of these for downvotes 😅

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Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:

  • Comments - Ranked 8 with 48 comments

@blocktrades and @smooth realy used their power wisely by supporting upvote @burnpost.. Cheers...

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Dayumn, that's alot alot of Steem Power :D

Thanks ;) :D

Some of the people on this list and their content :(

Yeah, not great, but perhaps it was worse 6/7 months ago?

It was definitely worse. However, I don't like to think in the past. At some point in history all sorts of unsavory behaviors were acceptable.
Let's keep moving forward, it seems like the swamp still needs some draining.
In the meantime our progress is great.

I'm with you on all the above :)

 4 years ago  Reveal Comment