Source: www.pixabay.com
Repository
https://github.com/steemit/steem
Introduction
"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there."
-C.F. Kettering
Is there is anything that boders the human mind, it is a question of what will happen tomorrow. Those who know what lies tomorrow can easily prepare for it. This phenomenon is also present on Steemit, people are asking whats steem price going be like by December 2018? what's the future of the platform?
Most answers are based on assumption or very rough estmiates with no clear pattern, however, we can statistically look at the trends and the predict what is to come and as they say "the numbers don't lie"
Outline
- Scope
- Results
- Findings
- Conclusion
- Tools and Scripts
- Relevant Links and Resources
Scope
Date of the analysis: 13th August 2018
Time frame of the analyzed data: January 2017 to July 2018
Components of the analysis: Analyzing activities relevant to steemit activities and predicting how the future looks like toward the end of the year
- Details of how the data was sourced, scripts and forecast method is explained at the end of the post.
Results
- ACCOUNTS CREATED
The number of accounts created monthly is not expected to change with much difference except there is a spike in the price of steem. This year accounts on steemit passed the 1,000,000 th mark, since then there has been a drop in the number of accounts created monthly.
Looking towards the end of the year, it is not looking bad as about 261k new accounts would be created before the end of the year with a seasonal pick up in December with an average of 52k accounts monthly. Between January to July 2018, monthly accounts created averaged 78k per month.
Last year 2017 averaged 35k accounts per month, with the forecast data we are set to average 65k accounts per month i.e an increase by ~85%
- NUMBER OF POST AND DISTINCT AUTHORS
The number of post and number of distinct authors move mostly in direct proportion, an increase in post correlates with an increase in authors.
Number of post is affected by the price of steem, January 2018 saw a peak in the number of post same as experienced with steem price.
About 5M extra posts are expected before the year of the year with 400k+ distinct authors
- NUMBER OF VOTES AND DISTINCT VOTERS
Since the beginning of this year, there has not been much difference between the number of monthly votes. According to the analysis, the pattern is set to continue as the number of votes is to remain between 20M and 24M with a change of less than 20%
Number of upvotes is not expected to fall below 15M and not expected to pass 35M with a confidence level of 95%
- PAYOUT FORECAST
With dip in the price of steem, the amount of payout is also set to take a dip even though steemit is predicted to have a slight increase in the number of post.
Between January and July steem has lost value by almost 80% and that is evident in the number of declining post upvote value. Upvotes have lost value, an upvote of about $2 now would have been worth about $10 in January
Findings and Conclusion
This year started on a brighter not for steemit with much expectation for the year. But no one predicted it would get this rough as the enthusiasm was so high.
The first half of the year was a good one for steemit as growth was experienced with first and second quarter, but the end of the second quarter and beginning of the third quarter has been turbulent with mixed feelings.
Before the end of the third quarter, some balance is expected but the change would not be much. If you are expecting some spikes in steemit activities, i would advice you lower your expectations.
The year would will have a happy ending but not an exciting one.
Tools and Scripts
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 17 was used to access the data from STEEMSQL ( a publicly managed database by 
Microsoft Excel 2016 was used to plot graphs and Charts.
SCRIPTS
For number of votes
SELECT
count (txvotes.voter) AS Votes,
count (distinct txvotes.voter) AS [distinctVoters]
FROM TXVOTES
WHERE timestamp>= CONVERT(datetime,'01/01/2017') AND timestamp< CONVERT(datetime,'07/31/2018')
GROUP BY
MONTH (txvotes.timestamp)
For accounts created
SELECT
count (accounts.created) AS [ACCTS]
FROM ACCOUNTS
WHERE
(Convert(date, accounts.created) >= '2018-01-01' AND Convert(date, accounts.created) <= '2018-07-31')
GROUP BY
MONTH(accounts.created)
For number of post, Distinct Authors And Payout
SELECT
count(comments.created) AS [POST],
Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctAuthor],
sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.total_payout_value)) AS [TotalPayoutValue],
sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.curator_payout_value)) AS [CuratorPayoutValue]
FROM COMMENTS
WHERE
(Convert(date, comments.created) >= '2017-01-01' AND Convert(date, comments.created) <= '2018-07-31')
and DEPTH = 0
GROUP BY
MONTH(comments.created)
This forecast was done using Triple Exponential Smoothing. An exponential smoothing model taking into account seasonal changes as well as trends., it is used for smoothing time series data.
All upper and lower confidence bounds are with a confidence level of 95%
For more details
http://www.statisticshowto.com/exponential-smoothing/
https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section4/pmc435.htm