Curators function is essential for the blockchain since it is the method used to reward authors and distribute the inflation. The bigger the curator stake the larger the votes/rewards.
Here we will be looking into the top 20 curators. The ones with the highest voting power and the highest earnings. How are they doing in distributing their voting power. How many votes they made? How many authors they reward? Do they distribute the rewards equally to those authors?
The data presented here is for the period April 1 till April 27, 2020.
Top 20 Curators by earnings
Here is the table for the top 20 curators by earnings.
| Rank | Curator | HP Earned | Curator HP [Apr 27, 2020] |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | appreciator | 74,917 | 7,460,000 |
| 2 | rocky1 | 29,490 | 2,650,000 |
| 3 | upmewhale | 29,211 | 2,900,000 |
| 4 | theycallmedan | 23,860 | 2,690,000 |
| 5 | blocktrades | 20,200 | 3,340,000 |
| 6 | bdvoter | 18,343 | 1,720,000 |
| 7 | tipu | 16,982 | 1,410,000 |
| 8 | buildawhale | 14,603 | 1,380,000 |
| 9 | darthknight | 12,485 | 2,580,000 |
| 10 | ocdb | 11,955 | 1,400,000 |
| 11 | curangel | 11,489 | 1,330,000 |
| 12 | trafalgar | 10,598 | 979,517 |
| 13 | sweetsssj | 8,270 | 1,040,000 |
| 14 | threespeak | 8,127 | 1,080,000 |
| 15 | likwid | 8,021 | 869,173 |
| 16 | themarkymark | 7,970 | 546,029 |
| 17 | therealwolf | 7,205 | 778,433 |
| 18 | tribesteemup | 7,136 | 846,000 |
| 19 | steemmonsters | 5,849 | 722,000 |
| 20 | xeldal | 5,017 | 1,220,000 |
For reference I have added the curators HP that they had on April 27, 2020.
Disclaimer: The earnings are approximate and not totally accurate mostly because of the VESTS to HIVE ratio that is changed daily and I have a fix ratio for the period.
The @appreciator account is standing out with almost 75k HP earned in the period and almost 7.5M HP. Next are @rocky1, @upmewhale and @theycallmedan.
We can notice that the rank is not as the same as the HP that the accounts have.
Now that we have the top curators by earning let’s see how are they voting.
Number of votes from the top 20 curators
Here is the chart.
By this metric @tipu comes first with more than 4k votes distributed in the period. Next are @therealwolf and @curangel with around 2.5k votes.
Number of unique accounts voted from the top curators
The number of votes is not as important if those are given out to the same account.
Here is the chart for the number of unique accounts voted from the top curators.
@tipu comes first by this metric as well with 1249 unique accounts voted in the period. Next are @therealwolf and @curangel with just above 1000 accounts voted. The difference here is not as big as for the number of votes.
Votes Diversification
We have seen the number of accounts voted from the top curators. But is this metric enough? Some can vote a few accounts with large votes, and hundreds of others with tiny votes and the number of accounts voted will be large. But this is not telling the whole story.
To check how are the top curators casting their votes between the accounts voted I have calculated the standard deviation in the rewards given out from each of the top curation.
Wikipedia definition for standard deviation:
In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range.
What this basically says is if the STDEV is low, the votes are distributed more equally, and if the STDEV is high, the votes are distributed unequally between the accounts. Low STDEV = good, high STDEV = bad.
Here is the table for the standard deviation of each curator.
| Rank | Curator | Authors Rewarded STDEV |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | curangel | 0.08% |
| 2 | ocdb | 0.15% |
| 3 | appreciator | 0.17% |
| 4 | tipu | 0.19% |
| 5 | blocktrades | 0.20% |
| 6 | therealwolf | 0.22% |
| 7 | theycallmedan | 0.23% |
| 8 | themarkymark | 0.34% |
| 9 | buildawhale | 0.34% |
| 10 | upmewhale | 0.37% |
| 11 | bdvoter | 0.41% |
| 12 | rocky1 | 0.44% |
| 13 | trafalgar | 0.50% |
| 14 | steemmonsters | 0.58% |
| 15 | darthknight | 0.61% |
| 16 | threespeak | 0.73% |
| 17 | tribesteemup | 1.10% |
| 18 | likwid | 1.15% |
| 19 | sweetsssj | 1.58% |
| 20 | xeldal | 3.51% |
By this metric @curangel comes on top with a very low standard deviation of 0.08%, next is @ocdb with almost double the value of 0.15%, and then @appreciator.
When we use the standard deviation and normalize the number of accounts voted to the top value the final chart looks like this.
So, there you have it. The best curator on the Hive Blockchain @curangel! He has voted the largest number of accounts with the most equally rewards distributed to each of them.
@curangel is a community project run by @pharesim and a team of curators. There is a daily report on each of the votes given from the different curators. A dedicated web page was announced recently https://curangel.com/ for everyone that wants to delegate to the project. They are paying curation rewards to the delegators.
@tipu and @ocdb, another two community driven curation projects are on the second and third place. Great job from them as well.
Those on the bottom of the chart have some catching up to do 😊.
I find this topic quite interesting and valuable for the community and may dive to the curators with lower HP and do some ranking in that class in the future.
Hope this makes thing a bit more clear and it may serve as a guidance if everyone want to delegate there HP, earn some curation rewards from it, but still want to be sure that the HP is put in good use.
All the best
@dalz