SEC S17-W3 || Onchain Metrics of Steem blockchain

Assalamualaikum everyone.

Welcome to the post.Hopefully, all of you will be doing well and enjoying the time with the grace and blessings of Almighty Allah. Today, I'm here to be a part of the week 3 contest in the SteemitCryptoAcademy comunity. The topic of discussion for this week is Onchain Metrics of Steem blockchain. So, let's start the fun without any wastage of time.

What are the main Onchain Metrics indicators used to evaluate user activity on the Steem blockchain, and how can they be explained in terms of their significance?

There are so many Onchain Metrics that can be used to evaluate the user activity on the Steemit platform and the most important ones are listed below.

• Posting:

This indicates how often a person publishes content on the Steemit platform. A user's content type for example the quality and quantity of the posts are also included here. This metric also tell us about the interest value of the users in different type of dynamics and contests.

• Commenting:

Another important dynamic in the Steemit blockchain is the comments. This indicates how involved and active the user is in the debates and engaging with other users on the platforms. The quality and the quantity of the comments also matter a lot.

• Voting:

This thing includes the frequency with which a person votes on comments and posts. High frequency indicates a hands-on approach to material curation. The Voting Mana keeps track of how much of the user's Steem Power (SP) is used for voting. The more the SP you have, the more will be the Voting Mana and vice versa.

• Followers/Following:

This is also another important metric of the Steemit platform. This thing indicates the trust of the other users of the platform on the said user and how they intercat with other each other and like content of each other, etc.

• Wallet Transfers:

These are the exchanges of Steem tokens between users. Keeping an eye on token transfers can provide information about the distribution of tokens within the Steem ecosystem, as well as the withdrawals activities of the users.

• SP Delegations:

Another important thing is the delegations of the users of the Steemit platform. A user can delegate his SP to a particular community in order to support the community account or the other users in order to provide the Resource Credits to them, particularly the newcomers.

Most of these metrics can be easily tracked from various tools which are linked to the Steemit platform. Have a look at the below screenshots in this regard.

How can On-chain Metrics data from the Steem blockchain be analyzed to understand user engagement trends and community evolution over time?

The onchain metrics of the Steem blockchain are very much helpful in understanding the user engagement trends and community evolution. Some of the important points in this regard are discussed below.

• Trends in User Activity:

The first and the most important thing is the overall activity trends of the users of the whole platform. An expanding and active user base is shown by rising trends in all of these indicators. While on the other hand, a decrease indicates a community that is getting smaller or less active.

It is also helpful in determining the seasonal growth of the users activity. Users may become more active at certain occasions or competitions, thus making brief increases in activity and engagement. Take into account outside variables such as market developments, platform upgrades, and initiatives. For example, a huge increase in Steem usage might occur simultaneoulsy with a significant social media blackout or so.

• Creation of Content:

With the help of these metrics, we can analyze the volume of posts that are made over time. A growing community that is actively producing content is suggested by an increase in post volume. A decrease may be a sign of users discomfort or a lack of new and creative ideas.

Morever, we can keep track of posts'' typical word or character counts. While longer posts could reflect in-depth debates or knowledge, a shift towards shorter posts might tell us about faster habits of content creation. So, these are a few things which are linked to the content publish and creation on the blockchain.

• Community Evolution:

By the help pf the Steem Blockchain Metrics, we can keep track of how many new accounts are opened. A consistent rise indicates that new users are being attracted to the platform. A rate that is dropping could be a sign of trouble for the new users.

We can easily monitor the number of followers of well-known Steem users. Fast growth indicates that these users are well-liked by the community and might have an impact on trends. To determine their influence, we can determine their interaction and content patterns.

Another important thing is that we can keep an eye out for patterns in user demographics, such as preferred languages or locations. A change in these numbers could mean that the community is drawing in new dynamics are like to post on various topics in which they are well interested.

What are the specific challenges of interpreting On-chain Metrics on the Steem blockchain, considering its unique social structure and incentives?

As we have already discussed the importance of the on-chain metrics of the platform, now we are going to discuss certain difficulties in understanding on-chain metrics because of the distinctive social structure and incentive systems of Steem. Here are some important things to think about:

• Complicated Incentive Strcucture:

This is a very important thing to discuss here. We know that for posting, voting, and commenting, users on Steem are rewarded with cryptocurrency (STEEM). This may cause individuals to participate in these activities mostly for the purpose of earning rewards rather than out of a true interest in creating content. Metric shown may not accurately represent real involvement of the users.

• The Impact of Whales and Influencers:

The advantage of having a lot of Steem Power (SP) is that users can vote more frequently and have a bigger impact on content visibility. Metrics related to curation and content promotion might be distorted by a small number of whales with high voting activity, which makes it challenging to evaluate natural user engagement.

• Buying and Selling Votes:

Some of the users may purchase or sell votes in order to highly increase the prominence of particular pieces of content. Metrics like upvotes and curation incentives can be distorted by this manipulation, making it difficult to determine how interested a user is in different areas of interest.

• Bot Accounts and Account Farming:

Metrics can also be artificially inflated by automated bots or farming accounts, which are completely accounts managed by a single person. Real user engagement may not be represented by a large number of posts or comments.

How can the On-chain Metrics of the Steem blockchain be used to assess the health of its ecosystem, including aspects such as the distribution of voting powers, content diversity, and reward fairness?

Let's dicuss how the on-chain data on the Steem blockchain may be used to evaluate the ecosystem's health, taking into account voting power distribution, content diversity, and reward fairness. So, let's discuss them one by one.

• Distribution of Voting Power:

We can calculate the Gini coefficient for the Steem Power (SP) distribution. A high coefficient suggests a significant amount of SP in a few accounts (whales), which may lead to content filtering or manipulation.We cal also keep track of how many unique users are actively voting. A low number indicates that a limited group controls content visibility, reducing content diversity and user interaction.

• Content Diversity:

Examine the distribution of posts across categories. A healthy ecosystem focuses on a wide range of content types. A dominant single category indicates a lack of content diversity and the potential for niche creation. Use on-chain data to identify probable plagiarism using content analysis tools and programs. High levels of plagiarism imply a lack of original content development, which reduces user interest. Another important thing is to Monitor the amount of unique users who create posts. A rising number indicates a larger pool of content authors, which promotes content diversity.

• Rewards Fairness:

With the help of thee metrics, we can determine the relationship between post/comment rewards and measures such as user engagement (comments, upvotes) or content quality indicators (sentiment analysis). A weak correlation indicates that rewards may not be given properly based on true user interest.

Track the distribution of curation awards among users. An even distribution indicates a more equitable system in which a broader range of users are taking benefit from identifying valuable information. SP Delegation. We can easily monitor SP delegation to curation services. While delegation can increase the voting power for smaller users, overconcentration in a few accounts may also concentrate curation benefits.

How can Steem blockchain developers utilize On-chain Metrics to enhance platform usability, drive adoption, and address scalability issues while upholding community integrity?

• Enhancing Platform Usability:

The developers can help in order to better understand user problems, compare indicators such as successful vs. stopped post creation attempts and upvote difficulties. This can help improve interfaces and procedures.

Another important thing is that by analyzing user activity data to suggest suitable content categories or link people who share common interests. This personalizes the user experience and increases engagement among the users of the platform.

This thing can also help the devs to monitor user behavior and provide titles or recognition based on positive criteria such as quality content creation or high-value curation. This make the impressive changes in the platform and encourages user interaction.

• Driving Adoption:

The developers can use on-chain data to analyze user demographics and content choices. They can use this information to create customized marketing campaigns that attract new users with relevant interests accross the globe.

They can also use the indicators such as account creation completion rates or initial post creation rates to discover the problems or difficulties in the onboarding process. This may be enhanced to keep new users benefited.

• Addressing Scalability Issues:

The developers can monitor on-chain resource utilization (CPU, bandwidth) across several operations. They can also odentify resource-intensive activities and optimize features to increase scalability of the platform in overall.

The developers of the platform can also examine user access patterns and frequently visited content. Implement caching methods or offload the static material to increase platform scalability on the chain.

Morevover, they can also examine on-chain transactions to find high-priority operations such as post creation and voting. Prioritize these transactions during peak usage periods to ensure platform performance and thus this thing can also help in increasing the overall scalability.

• Ensuring Community Integrity:

The first and the most important thing is that the developers can analyze comment and post content, as well as user activity, to detect suspected spam or abuse. They can develope and use automatic filtering or moderating methods based on these metrics.

They can also monitor account creation rates and user activity patterns to detect potential Sybil attacks (farming accounts). Implement verification mechanisms to ensure that only the authentic and trusted users participate on the platform.

The developers can also be able to examine reward distribution and voting trends to detect vote buying or manipulation attempts. Thus they can implement strategies to prohibit and stop certain activities while ensuring equitable reward distribution accross the platform.

Conclusions

The on-chain metrics of the Steemit platform are effective tools for analyzing Steem user activity, content development, voting power distribution, and rewards fairness. By going deep into these metrics, developers can improve platform usability with features, drive adoption with targeted marketing, address scalability issues with resource optimization and caching schemes. And can also protect community integrity by detecting abuse and manipulation while ensuring equitable reward distribution and user privacy.

I would like to invite my friends @malikusman1, @khursheedanwar, @aaliarubab, @artist1111 and @suboohi to be a part of this amazing contest.