Distribution of Steem & Steem Power

Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world

Earlier this year Oxfam calculated that just 8 people control the same wealth as 50% of the rest of the world.

How does Steemit compare?

With all the talk in recent weeks about whales powering down, unfair downvoting and upvoting, it's interesting to look at how the distribution of wealth on Steemit compares with the rest of the world and how the governance model stacks up compared to big business. It's important for the Witnessess have a fair share of the platform to ensure their interests are aligned with the rest of the community. I also discuss the use of the reserved Steemit Account.

The total estimated market cap of Steemit stands at around 27 million dollars, using data from http://steemwhales.com/.
59% is owned by the top 8 accounts but this includes 2 large accounts that are not expected to influence rewards and payouts.

@steemit is a Steemit Inc controlled account
@poloniex is an account that is used to transfer funds to the Poloniex exchange. The majority of the account holds STEEM rather than Steem power so it seems reasonable to exclude this.

27% of what's left is owned by the next 8 accounts

This suggests a fairer distribution of value compared to traditional Economies.
It's worth noting this is a simplistic view, some people have several accounts and some accounts are run by multiple people but it appears that the distribution of Steemit Value is distributed significantly more evenly across accounts than the wealth distribution of people in traditional Economies outlined in the Oxfam report.

A Closer look at the Distribution of Steem Wealth

How are Witnesses, the governance structure of Steemit, interests aligned with the system?

Corporate Governance Best Practice

Modern best practice corporate governance structures in business aim to align managements interests with shareholders by giving management a share in ownership. This aim here is that management has an interest in the long term future of the enterprise rather than short term gain which could be detrimental to the long term value of a company.

Witnesses

Witnesses are paid in Steem Power which represents a long term investment in Steemit. Their influence is important as they decide on the implementation of proposals and collectively control 8% of the Steem Economy, they are effectively the executives of Steemit.

The following graph looks at how much of the System is owned by the top 50 Witnesses compared to the rest.

Some assumptions

I have excluded the top 8 accounts and @steemit
I have excluded people with less than 10 Dollars
I have only included the top 50 Witnesses.

I have divided accounts into 3 categories based on estimated account value:

Users are people with less than 10k Dollars
Investors are people with more than 10k Dollars
Whales are people with more than 50k Dollars

Spread of Witnesses

Witnesses are spread across the 3 categories of users and overall seem to represent the broad spectrum of people invested in the Steemit Economy (based on value).

There is a large chunk of witnesses in the investor category with a better than average investment.
The whale category includes a lot of witnesses which is no surprise but what is important is that they have less influence than the rest of the Whales in terms of Investment. And I have not included the top 9 accounts which would skew this even further.

This analysis excludes the top 9 accounts who control 60% of the Steem value; @steemit, @poloniex, @blocktrades, @freedom, @ned, @dan, @jamesc, @ben, @val-a

The Steemit Account

This account holds 41% of the Steemit Wealth. I like to compare Cryptocurrencies to Economies and in this case it means the Steemit Economy has a warchest of 41% of the value of the Economy, a type of Sovereign wealth fund. This seems like a very large percentage to hold in a fund compared to modern developing economies but maybe this is a bad comparrison. There is no doubt the future of the STEEM Economy will depend, in large part, on how this will be distributed.

What are the plans for this distribution?
How do you think it should be distributed?

Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.