This is an extension to my last post about generations on Steem. Cryptocurrency, being a financial asset existing in our present financial environment, and one that is inherently speculative, has it's own feedback loops. This has the effect of a boom/bust cycle, which very heavily affects user growth of the network. This has been true for Bitcoin, cryptocurrency in general and for Steem specifically. It's interesting to note that Steem's cycles have not been entirely synchronized with Bitcoin, although there is certainly a correlation.
On Steem during the boom, payouts are high which attracts a lot of people. In the bust, payouts are low and effort seems wasted, so we shed users. This introduces a kind of 'seasonality' to Steem, although not of regular interval or as predictable as the real summer and winter. Continuous, exponential growth like that of Facebook or Twitter would be nice, but for us it's just not the nature of the beast. Instead, after each full cycle, we are left with a new core to build upon. Every new cycle, as long as it doesn't die, the tree gets bigger, with solid rings built upon solid rings.
The end result can still be exponential, just not continuous exponential growth. It's more like hyperbolic growth for a brief season, followed by a longer period of decline and then lull, until eventually we see a brief season of hyperbolic growth again.
This makes me wonder, what of the users that are shed each cycle? Do they come back as part of the new cycle or are they typically forever gone from Steem? We have had 3 such cycles so far, it should be answerable in the data.