Steem Investigations
June the 14th, 2018
In this series, inspired by my discussion with @crypto-econom1st on @penguinpablo 's Daily Steem Stats Report, we will periodically (sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, depending on my motivation and the free time I have) investigate an operation on the Steem Blockchain.
The goal here is not to ostracize anyone, but only to discover some behaviours that we may not know about. As the blockchain allows transparency to some extent, we will use that leeway to investigate (for the sake of discovery and curiosity) strange / singular / odd behaviours and/or operations.
If you're selected, please don't be offended !
I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, and everyone is free to do whatever he wants !
I'm just doing this out of curiosity !
The data
Today, we will just extract the 50 biggest transfers that happened yesterday (2018/06/14 UTC) and select the one that is the strangest.
As I don't have access to SteemSQL, I will use Python and the beem module by holgern (@holger80). Of course, if this series has a bit of success, or at least people participating in the comments, I might take a subscription to SteemSQL, to be able to make faster and more complex extractions.
Code to extract the data (loop between blocks 23299572 - sblock - and 23328363 - eblock)
Then the TOP 50 in STEEM and in SBD are put them in a CSV file, from which I select a transfer to investigate (pure subjective choice). The extraction took approximatively 30 minutes (0.067 seconds per block on average / 28791 blocks).
The Chosen One
The transfer we will investigate today is...
The Investigation
So here we got a transfer from @maiyude to @robotq for an amount of 3800 STEEM.
@maiyude seems to be a geniune account, with real posts, mostly publishing with the #cn, #cn-art, #art tags, remastering crypto-currencies logo in an artistic and graphic way.
What is strange, is the upvotes received (not on the posts of the account, but on comments on other accounts' posts), here's an extract:
We can see patterns of circle voting here (with @abit, @gogoabc, @robotq, @fishaa, @fishbb, @fishcc, @fishdd, @tinna).
And another argument for the circle voting theory is the way the upvotes take place, on old posts in the comments:
It seems we're confronted with a textbook case of circle voting. But the mistery of the 3800 STEEM transfer remains. It hasn't been powered up, and stays for now on the @robotq account. Leading me to conclude both accounts (and some more in the circle maybe) are owned by the same person.
We can clearly say that a lot of these accounts are linked, seeing the transfers coming to @robotq:
These transfers come from powering down on the accounts. So it seems like the circle is stopping and every STEEM is being transferred back to one account.
But this also attracted my attention:
Translation (according to Google) is:
Thank you for your support to FF Bank!
What is this FF Bank ? It seems like everything is more complex now. As I don't speak Chinese, I won't be able to investigate further on the matter, but for a first episode, it looks like we stumbled on something interesting.
And the fact that @robotq systematically downvotes every comment of @biblegateway (known spammer) is also strange as it's not reciprocal. Why would a circle voting scheme be interested in reducing a spammer to silence ?
The blockchain will never stop to surprise us !
.
Thanks a lot @crokkon !
I didn't know if it was in the spectrum of utopian analysis, so I put the tags in there for this first one. I won't for future "specific investigations". Thanks a lot for the tip on
blockchain.stream()I will use it from now on as I was doing a lot of things that way.It's a bit late right now to engage in a Discord conversation, but I will contact you tomorrow, I'm already in the utopian discord (joined very recently). I love data analysis so I'm really interested to brainstorm a bit to see the type of analysis that would add value and be in the range of utopian contributions.
For @steemcleaners, as I said on my post I'm doing that out of curiosity, I'm not ready yet to act on it, as I would feel bad...
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This is a very interesting mystery. So, you're now a financial investigator. Maiyude means fishmonger in Chinese. Maybe FF Bank means Fat Fish Bank. Fish in Chinese symbolizes abundance. In my opinion, it is an organized group and the distribution center is maiyude. Steemit is based on an oceanic ecosystem ranking hence those involved in the fishing industry (fishermen) or distribution of fishes (fishmonger) are indicating that they are richer and more powerful than whales. That's just my guess of course. I could be wrong.
I didn't look more into the FF Bank as the language barrier prevents me to do more research (and I'm not trusting Google Translate enough to base conclusions on approximative translations). But with maiyude meaning fishmonger, the conclusion I came to seems realistic :
In France, we call tontine (maybe you will know the exact word in Chinese) a system of lending / borrowing imported by Chinese people, where they make private informal loans between immigrants who come from the same region in China.
To promote the growth of the community and allow newcomers to have support from immigrants from their region who are in France since a longer time and have means to support them (to establish a business, or else...), they have a opaque parallel banking system. With the pressure of the families (lender and borrower) still in the native Chinese region, this ensures the reimbursement (maffia style).
I'm not sure what I'm looking at here, but I think it's this kind of arrangement, transposed in Steem (so maybe not that geographically centered). So i'm totally rejoining you in your guess.
I've heard of tontine in my country too. It's known as "kutu" in Malay and 会 (hui) in Chinese. This practice is illegal and often conducted underground. I grew up in a Chinese triad town and seen worse. Loan sharks will chop up people who are unable to repay their debts. Some people will commit suicide before loan sharks got to them.
That's harsh... Money lead to extreme behavious.
Let's not import that here if possible :D
Hehe! I thought mafia in Italy are ruthless too.
They kill people by burying them alive in wet cement then use the material for construction XD
salut tu vas pas te faire que des copains, lol, c'est quoi la politique des multicomptes ici? Moi ce qui m'intrigue c'est que la plupart des personnes qui me suivent demandent qu'on leur envoi des steems pour vous upvotez. A plus
:D Je pense qu'ils m'en tiendront pas rigueur.
Ils font vraiment ce qu'ils veulent et je ne juge pas. Ce qui m'intéresse c'est juste le coté blockchain et donc de pouvoir "suivre l'argent" comme on voit dans les films.
Y'a pas vraiment de politique de multi-comptes si tu les "paies" (c'est-à-dire que tu délègues toi-même du Steem Power à tes autres comptes), ce qui n'est pas autorisé c'est de créer des multi-comptes en profitant de la délégation de Steemit Inc. (les 15 SP que tu reçois quand tu t'inscris).
Et oui, pour le "spam" dans les mémos, c'est des bots qui pullulent et qui vendent un service de resteem / upvote, je te conseille de les ignorer tout simplement, leur service est de piètre qualité.
ok merci, pasr définition je suis contre les bots, sauf si ils servent une cause ou un intérêt commun. En gros payer pour gagner plus c'est juste hors de question. J'ai pas de multi comptes mais j'ai l'impression qu'il y en a pas mal, mais comme je pense créer une assoc en septembre je ferai peut être un compte spécifique, et tant que j'aurai pas de locaux si il se base sur l'adresse ip ça risque de faire un conflit. Tu fais comment pour créer un compte sans la délégation de steemit?
Certains bots ont un intérêt, et il y a pas mal d'articles sur le sujet qui permettent de peser le pour et le contre pour ceux qui est des upvote / bid bots.
Après pour certains projets, c'est obligatoire de créer d'autres comptes pour séparer clairement les activités, donc en soi le multi-comptes n'est pas mauvais, il l'est quand c'est pour exploiter, abuser le système.
Pour créer un compte "payant", tu as plusieurs options :
Il y en a peut-être d'autres, mais ceux-là sont sérieux.
ok cool merci
This is really awesome. Sorry that I don't have any questions or valuable contribution. But I thought it would be nice to let you know. As based on the current number of comments and upvotes you might not do this again.
While typing this I do have one idea. Although I don't know the precise utopian rules I thought perhaps you can do a data query to search for circle voting in general? If you somehow manage to do so that might qualify? Perhaps @crokkon can first confirm/deny this?
Hi, thanks for coming and taking a look !
I'm satisfied with the results (I'm not used to big payouts and 100+ comments) so I'm gonna do it again. Maybe not every day because it takes a lot of time, but once in a while, I think it's a good and fun exercise.
I will also try, as you suggest, to make more general statistics that could qualify as a contribution according to the Utopian guidelines. I'm currently speaking with crokkon on Discord to discuss about the possibilities.
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Good afternoon. I like your publications. Thank you
Thanks sweecee ! Long time no see. I hope you're good.
Looks like @wittywheat gave us a possible meaning :D