One of the features of Steemit is the ability to delegate power.  By delegating power, you can pass the benefits of Steem Power to someone else yet you retain the ownership.

Many people delegate Power.  Some people do it for free, while other charge a fee. Leasing SP seems to be a growing business model on Steemit.  At time of analysis 385.13bn vests are currently held by people on Steemit and of this 123.02bn is delegate, that’s almost 32% delegation ratio.

Basically the Delegation Ratio is how much of every 1 Vest owned is delegated out to someone else.

The aim of this analysis is to gain a further understanding of this 32% delegation ratio by looking at account classification between Whales, Orcas, Dolphins, Minnows and Redfish.

## The Analysis

Categories are as follows
Whales >1,000,000,000 VESTS
Orcas >=100,000,000 and <=1,000,000,000
Dolphins >=10,000,000 and <100,000,000
Minnows >=1,000,000 and <10,000,000
Redfish <1,000,000 VESTS

The total number of each account at time of analysis was

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/c6506744dfc7bfd7beea103a7302564aef35image.png)

 
## High level overview
The Overall delegation Ratio on Steemit is 32%, the average delegation ratio is 1% and 1.16% of all accounts on steemit make a delegation to someone else

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/f33d915be7cf5351e6cadd9908a2870edae6image.png)
 

We can see from the bar chart on the left the actual delegation ration for whales is 38.10% and this reduces as the size of the account reduces.  Orcas delegation ratio is 27.6%, Dolphins 22%, Minnows 14.4% and Redfish 5%

In total 1.16% of accounts on Steemit make a delegation. This is further broken down to 67.5% for Whales, 43.12% of Orcas, 34.5% of Dolphins, 22% of Minnows and almost 1% of Redfish make a delegation.

The pie chart below shows the % each classification contributed to the overall total amount of Vests delegated.  Of all the vests delegated Whales delegate almost 74%, Orcas 15%, dolphins almost 8%, Minnows less than 3% and Redfish 0.5%

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/f2dd876e5ac32c47d3311fc12430978d4bfaimage.png)

 
From this it looks like whales are the most generous in terms of delegation.  Would you agree? 
Want to see who has the largest delegation ratios?  Check out the tables below.
 
![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/787df31559267633e0fc9143a21b4f83bdfbimage.png)


The SQL query used to gather this data from SteemSQL was

``` language
Select 
name,
created,
vesting_shares,
delegated_vesting_shares,
received_vesting_shares,
reputation
FROM Accounts (NOLOCK)
```

## Deeper Analysis
The data above represent ALL accounts on Steemit.  But by adding further filters to this data set, we can revile a rather different picture.

First, let’s exclude all accounts that do not delegate.  This increases the actual delegation ratio to 0.69 and the average to 0.72.

Now we can see that for those that do delegate, the average delegation ratio between whales, orcas and dolphins does not change much with this filter. On average the whales delegation ratio is only 3% higher than dolphins.  The category with the lowest delegation ratio is Minnows with an average delegation ratio of 56%.

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/d15f8282422a842c1ca8ad9410410ad66a20image.png)

 
Whales do however stand out with an actual delegation ratio of 73%.  Included within this whale value is an account called @misterdelegation.  This account is an official Steemit account used to support projects on the blockchain.  By removing this account, the actual delegation ratio increase to 70% for all accounts that delegate and for Whales increases the actual delegation ratio to 76%.  

Not really a dramatic change and whales still stand out with the highest actual delegation ratio.
 
![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/cbc2db05bc7ab2d889d9ae59efa92068bd89image.png)

Next I wanted to also exclude anyone that is getting paid for their delegation.  This would leave accounts that delegate for free.  However trying to find out who charges for delegation and who does not was not possible to complete accurately.

After trying a number of different queries and analysis to try and create a list of accounts that have delegated for a fee, the following option was used for this analysis.

Leasing Steem is not the only business on Steemit.  Bidbots are also a growing business.  As they are a business, they would most likely incur a cost for leasing SP.  It would be a B2B business.  Therefore I have assumed anyone that has delegated SP to a bidbot has done so for profit.

To gather data on all accounts that have delegated to bidbots I ran the following SQL query
Select delegator

``` language
From  TXDelegateVestingShares (NOLOCK)
where
delegatee in ('kittybot', 'isotonic', 'getboost', 'booster', 'lightningbolt', 'nado.bot', 'shares', 'peace-bot', 'postdoctor', 'spydo', 'singing.beauty', 'minnowhelper', 'jerrybanfield', 'sunrawhale', 'sleeplesswhale', 'zapzap', 'cryptoempire', 'pwrup', 'redwhale', 'lovejuice', 'foxyd', 'noicebot', 'minnowfairy', 'honestbot', 'seakraken', 'upboater', 'whalebuilder', 'mrswhale', 'upgoater', 'smartsteem', 'dailyupvotes', 'pushup', 'allaz', 'sneaky-ninja', 'upmyvote', 'dolphinbot', 'minnowvotes', 'chronocrypto', 'thebot', 'inciter', 'oceanwhale', 'promobot', 'mitsuko', 'bearwards', 'voterunner', 'brupvoter', 'payforplay', 'edensgarden', 'redlambo', 'mercurybot', 'appreciator', 'slimwhale', 'moneymatchgaming', 'boomerang', 'childfund', 'buildawhale', 'youtake', 'megabot', 'authors.league', 'upme', 'alphaprime', 'steembloggers', 'msp-bidbot', 'lost-ninja', 'estream.studios', 'upyou', 'postpromoter', 'rocky1', 'bluebot', 'flymehigh', 'aksdwi', 'puppybot', 'onlyprofitbot', 'boostbot', 'discordia', 'canalcrypto', 'therising', 'ebargains', 'fishbaitbot', 'luckyvotes', 'brandonfrye', 'estabond', 'upmewhale', 'hotbot', 'adriatik', 'steembidbot')
```

Using the data from this query I was able to extract a unique list of all people that have delegated to bidbots.

Now we can look at the data applying a filter to exclude all accounts that have delegated to bidbots, leaving all accounts that delegate for free.

And what a massive impact this has.

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/26d75eb89c7285a589583b67084fc9baab94image.png)

 
The actual delegation ratio is 49% for all accounts that delegate.  This is down 21% from 70%. The average delegation ratio is 73%, being held up by Redfish.  

We can now see clearly that Redfish and Dolphins are the most active in ‘free’ delegation with a ratio of 58% and 52%.  Whales now come in last with a ratio of 48%, that’s a massive difference.  

There are 8699 accounts that delegate for free. 56% of Whales(20), 29% of Ocras (78), 24% of Dolphins (378), 16% of Minnows (1219) and 0.8% of Redfish(7141).

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/1c63c1770c7c98108651c08f25bea461596cimage.png)

 
Although there are only 20 whales delegating for free we can see from the chart below they contribute almost 51% of the vest delegated for free

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/bfa82ca82b09365065d0786b054a0dd0a001image.png)

 
We also have a revised version of the accounts with the highest delegation ratio.

 ![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/a3ac0c01bb299e6b8ac82b9e5f7c16985369image.png)


## Disclaimer
I have used 1 of many possible methods to try and establish accounts that lease SP.  Therefore these values are only approximations.  This also means that some of the accounts shows with the largest delegation ratio given out for free may in fact charge.  It also makes no adjustment for accounts that in the past delegated to bidbot and no longer do so.  All accounts that even made delegation to bidbots have been used to filter the dataset.

## Conclusion
When you take a quick look at the data it appears that whales are the most generous delegators on steemit with the highest delegation ratio.  However a deeper dive into the data shows that a lot of this could relate to leasing of SP.

What is very interesting is that when it comes to free delegation that the delegation ratio does not change considerably between categories.  Redfish do have the highest delegation ratio, but it is worth pointing out, many of these redfish account were set up in the very early days on steemit and are duplicate accounts.

Want to know what your delegation ration is?  Comment below and I will pull the ratio for you

I am part of a Blockchain Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #BlockchainBI. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit or Blockchain data, please do contact me or any of the#BlockchainBI team and we will do our best to help you...

You can find #BlockchainBI on discord https://discordapp.com/invite/JN7Yv7j
 


<br /><hr/><em>Posted on <a href="https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@paulag/analysing-the-delegation-ratio-on-steemit">Utopian.io -  Rewarding Open Source Contributors</a></em><hr/>