Market Share of the Steem Blockchain by Application: June 2018 Analysis

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Introduction and Scope

The first half of 2018 has not been kind to crypto. The highs in the first week of January quickly faded, to be replaced by a six-month hangover as prices slumped back to the levels of late 2017. From the peak of January 3rd to the low of June 28th the Steem price reduced by 85%, narrowly avoiding the ignominy of falling back below a dollar. A timely reminder not to invest more than you can afford to lose.

But there are reasons to be positive. An analysis of the daily author and post numbers on the Steem blockchain show activity levels remain well above those from 2017 with a sizeable portion of the January surge retained despite the fierce bear market. This wider user base leaves the blockchain well-placed for the next upswing in the crypto cycle.

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Development around the blockchain also continues apace. In this month's analysis of the Steem data by source application I highlight a number of exciting new applications that have been added to the Steem infrastructure and point out which of last month's new entries have captured your attention and raced up the charts. I round this off with a full breakdown of all the June numbers.

Results

June 2018

First of all the June results.

As a change from the previous analysis I have updated the overall ranking system used to order the tables. The rankings by number of individual authors over the month and by amount of post payouts have been averaged to produce a combined ranking reflecting the importance of both measures. Numbers of posts have not been included in this statistic due to the potential impact of spam through some channels. The prior month results have been reordered for comparative purposes.

The individual rankings for author numbers, numbers of posts (not comments) and payout amounts (curation payout plus author payout but excluding beneficiaries and based on payouts made in the month rather than from posts made in the month) are unaffected by this change.

Top 50 steem applications - June 2018
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The "new" tag simply means a new entry to the top 50 compared to the prior month. This could include re-entries from earlier months as well as sites that are not operational and still under testing. This is something I will aim to separate in future analyses.

Top 10 steem applications - June 2018

A visual breakdown of the top ten ranked applications, first looking at author numbers:

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Secondly, those same 10 applications broken down by payout amounts:

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May 2018
For comparison, the May 2018 figures restated under the same ranking approach.

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Findings

Top of the Charts

The top 5 are unchanged, although DLive has moved from fifth position into a share of fourth place thanks to a very strong retention of users over the month, boosting its author ranking above that of Steepshot. The number of individual DLive streamers was down only 4.5% from May to June, a favourable result compared to the overall reduction of 16.8% across the whole blockchain.

The new ranking system elevates busy.org into second place in the table, although this is no change in position once the May results are restated. eSteem has the second highest ranking by number of authors but a lower payout ranking; understandable given its focus on taking the Steem blockchain to countries with lower average incomes. busy.org is a clear second in overall payouts, a position which currently looks unchallengeable from the platforms below. It will be interesting to see where utopian.io slots in once the new platform is up and running.

Rising stars

The three platforms that I highlighted last month have all risen rapidly. All power to my crystal ball!

Steemhunt has jumped up to 7th position thanks to an increase in author numbers of 450% and a jump in payouts of 850%. With nearly 1.5m SP in delegations the technology hunting site looks to have cemented its place in the top 10 for a while.
Tasteem is another fast riser, just behind in 8th, with user numbers up 500% and payouts up 1,200%. A beautifully designed website and 1.2m SP of delegations also make this competition-based-restaurant-guide a serious contender.
Partiko has also jumped up into the top 25 with a strong set of figures month on month (+85% / +975% for authors and payouts respectively).

Steempress, the wordpress plug-in for the Steem blockchain has also had a great month, with author and payout numbers both up over 100%.

New Entries

June saw a multitude of exciting new applications launched for the Steem blockchain, some of which have danced straight up into the top 25. Here are a couple that particularly caught my eye:

Elegance (https://elegance.blue) is one for your inner artist. Launched in earnest in the second week of June, Elegance is a platform dedicated to artists (specifically the painter, designer, print-maker kind of artist). The website has a gallery format (think pinterest) and a simple backdrop that lets the artwork do the talking. If art is your thing it's a great place to browse.

Still less than a month old, Elegance is straight in at ranking number 23 and is on the brink of breaking through 100 individual artists. There's a weekly top 10, promises of future competitions and 15k of SP to support contributions. You can read more about it here:
https://steemit.com/elegance/@elegance/introducing-elegance-a-decentralized-art-community-platform-on-steem

SteemPeak (https://steempeak.com) pitches itself as "A new way to experience the Steem platform." In concept it's a competitor to steemit.com and busy.org with the aim of being both simple for new users and all-encompassing for long-time experts.

Having launched at the start of June SteemPeak already comes with some great features. You'll be unsurprised to find that I'm a big fan of the "Dashboard" which pulls in all manner of your own Steem stats, including incoming and outgoing vote charts, author and curation reward levels and account growth. There's also a post scheduling system, a grid view option, a resteem filter, and a buffer system to avoid delays on commenting and voting. Curation trails are just one future element included on a formal roadmap. Whilst many of these functionalities may exist elsewhere, bringing them all together in one site is a winning idea.

SteemPeak is also straight onto the chart ranking at number 23, with higher payouts but lower user numbers than Elegance. I'm betting on this one being a riser next month.

You can read the introduction to SteemPeak here:
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@steempeak/introducing-steempeak-a-new-application-for-the-steem-blockchain-with-everything-you-need

Ones to Watch

One of the most interesting results from breaking down the steem data by application is that it reveals numerous applications in test and development stages. Here are a couple that I've picked to keep an eye on:

Ulogs (https://ulogs.org). If you've spent any time on Steem recently you must have seen the Ulogs. This site from @surpassinggoogle is still in alpha but it looks like a home for this community. There's more to read about the on-going development here:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@surpassinggoogle/ulogs-development-update-the-use-of-micro-task-per-github-issues-and-insight-into-our-roadmap

Actifit is looking to bring activity and fitness to the blockchain with "Proof of Activity". Whilst this app isn't in the rankings table yet, the launch only took place one week ago and the developers already have an Android “Actifit Fitness Tracker” available. Getting in the shape of things to come!
You can read more here on Actifit here:
https://steemit.com/actifit/@actifit/announcing-actifit-innovative-smt-for-rewarding-fitness-activity

Steemit share

Steemit.com's share of the overall user numbers rose by 1.5% to 61.2% in June (the percentage is in fact closer to 80% if you avoid the double counting of users posting across multiple platforms). No sign of a flippening just yet!

Conclusion

There are more ways to post to the Steem blockchain than you might have imagined. With the list of applications growing each month there are more and more opportunities for Steem users to find the niche and the community application that suits them best.

There are also still plenty of opportunities for developers to bring their own ideas to the blockchain and to see their creations rise up to the ranks of the leading platforms. With many of the new applications detailing plans to incorporate SMTs the second half of the year is likely to see some exciting innovations and ideas to push the boundaries of the Steem blockchain.

Repository

https://github.com/steemit/steem

Tools and Scripts

I used the following script to obtain the data (note that the dates have not been updated from the previous month):

Full month run grouped by date and app

SELECT
    Convert(date, Comments.created),
    IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null) as [SummarisedApp],
    Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
    Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor],
    sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.pending_payout_value)) AS [PendingPayoutValue],
    sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.curator_payout_value)) AS [CuratorPayoutValue],
    sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.total_payout_value)) AS [TotalPayoutValue]

FROM
    Comments (NOLOCK)
    
WHERE
    (Convert(date, Comments.created) >= '2018-04-24' AND Convert(date, Comments.created) <= '2018-05-31') AND
    depth = 0
    
GROUP BY
    Convert(date, Comments.created),
    IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null)

Distinct authors run grouped by app

SELECT
     IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null) as [SummarisedApp],
    Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
    Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor]

FROM
    Comments (NOLOCK)
    
WHERE
    YEAR(Comments.created) = 2018 AND 
    MONTH(Comments.created) = 5 AND
    depth = 0   
    
GROUP BY
    IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null)

No double counting run

SELECT
     
    Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
    Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor]

FROM
    Comments (NOLOCK)
    
WHERE
    YEAR(Comments.created) = 2018 AND 
    MONTH(Comments.created) = 5 AND
    Depth = 0

Relevant Links and Resources

Links are provided in the text.

Thanks for reading!