I frequently take a look at roughly how many active users we have by using two metrics. I check how many posts (top level) in the last 7 days and how many votes. While this isn't an exact science, it gives me a rough idea, more so than the 1,155,685 registered accounts.
Typically when I do these queries, I see around 16,000 - 20,000 unique authors in the last 7 days and around 45,000 - 60,000 unique voters. Since HF20 I have noticed less spam but I also noticed my feed is far less active (meaning real authors are not posting as much as well). So I would assume these numbers would have dropped considerably.
But did they?
No, they didn't! They went up, in fact, they are the highest I have ever seen in a while.
| Unique Top Level Posts | Unique Voters |
|---|---|
| 23,493 | 69,069 |
These are pretty significant jumps from what I consider the "norm" which is around 16-20K and 45-60K.
While these numbers are far lower than the 1.1M registered accounts, they are still probably 100% higher than the real active user counts. I would say at least 50% of these numbers are bot activity or duplicate accounts. Which puts our real active users around 8,000-12,000.
Why the increase?
I was curious how many accounts were created since HF20 and if that was a cause of the increased activity. Activity which I don't even notice as to me I see far less. So I queried how many accounts were created in the last 7 days. This is not a complete list, just the top 10.
| Creator | Count |
|---|---|
| steem | 8398 |
| blocktrades | 226 |
| steemmonsters | 108 |
| sniffnscurry | 48 |
| anonsteem | 42 |
| steemchoose | 32 |
| pharesim | 12 |
| steemcreate | 7 |
| matt-a | 7 |
| utopian-io | 4 |
These numbers are not abnormal and inline with typical pre-HF20 and in fact, they might even be considered low.
Conclusion
I still don't have a good explanation for the increase in activity. I was assuming I would find a dramatic decrease in activity but it was on the higher side of average. My feed does not reflect this conclusion though, which makes me very curious about the real source of this activity.
How did I get this data?
I used SteemSQL to pull this data using the following queries.
Total Accounts
SELECT Count(*)
FROM accounts
Recent Votes
SELECT Count(DISTINCT voter)
FROM txvotes
WHERE timestamp > Getdate() - 7
Recent Posts
SELECT Count(DISTINCT author)
FROM comments
WHERE depth = 0
AND created > Getdate() - 7
Recent Account Creations
SELECT DISTINCT creator,
Count(*)
FROM txaccountcreates
WHERE timestamp > Getdate() - 7
GROUP BY creator
ORDER BY Count(*) DESC