The Pareto principle is pretty well known and is often called the 80/20 rule and suggests that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. For example, a company will generally find that 80% of their income comes from 20% of their clients or in the US, the top 20% of earners have paid 80% of federal taxes.<sub><sub>[source](https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-rich-pay-more-taxes-top-20-percent-pay-record-share-income-taxes)</sub></sub>

I wonder though, if the same principle applies to Steem when it comes to various factors. How many are powering down their accounts / How many are powering up their SBD / How many are engaging / How many posts make 80% of the earnings and the like? It is hard to do here though as there are so many spamming bots and accounts that it makes it difficult to calculate as I would say that an account automating 20 posts a day isn't likely to earn much on them. So, I mean the *Human* accounts here.

https://i.imgur.com/yNSZsKh.jpg

But, in just a general sense of things, I would predict that 20% of people who are active on Steem today likely create 80% of the engagement here and in an even more general sense, I would assume that 20 percent of the active accounts are likely to be the long term thinkers who plan on being here in the future too. 

I wrote a post a few hours ago about user retention and it seems that about 80% of the accounts just don't make it very far here. Is it that the platform failed them or is it that 80% of people just aren't going to have what it takes at the moment?

To me, it seems that we spend so much time worrying about engaging the 80% that we forget that the 20% who are already engaged are the ones generating 80% of the engagement anyway. So, if it is the 20% creating most of the content, comments and income, why bother trying to salvage the 80% who require so much convincing and help to do anything, let alone become independent and proactive?

Perhaps the focus should shift from those who are in constant powerdowns to those who are powering up, those who are struggling to find their feet to those who are running the best they can, those who are not engaging to those who are. If there were a few KPIs generated that could evaluate a members likelihood of a long-term view, I wonder if there would be the ability to better concentrate resources on the 20% and grow them so they are better able to support the other 80 also. 

What this would effectively mean is that 80% of long-term actors resources would go to the 20%, other long-term actors. I don't mean in a circle jerk kind of thing but just in theory where long-run thinkers would spend a little more effort to identify others similar and support them heavily. This would speed the rate of growth of long termers and hopefully improve the volume and numbers in the middle class brackets by adding people who are community orientated. 

But, this could also happen at the lower levels of the platform also where the 20% engaged of the smalest accounts look to support each other heavily also. There is a lot of power and potential in those small numbers but for the most part, they aren't using it well as they are either spreading it too widely or targeting the whales on the platform hoping for a vote. If they used 80% of their power to support 20% of themselves, that 20 percent would grow quickly.

If the whale voters rather than spread widely targeted the 20 percent of community/long-term there would be much less value leak into the markets and much more powering up of smaller accounts who will then in turn, spread much more widely. Too much value seems to be leaking out through the 80% without them investing back into the platform to one day pull their weight.

Weight pulling is an important factor in a stake based system as essentially stake *is* the pulling of weight but if one has no stake, there is no weight that can be pulled with it. We all have a weight in this community but there are some who are being carried by others when they have done very little when it comes to lifting others. I have talked about creating nodes that will lift the network around them but, there are some who are like Steem black holes and what goes in will never escape to benefit the community. 

I wonder, if Steem ever hits 100 dollars will it be 20% of the accounts responsible for 80 dollars of that value? Most likely as they will be the ones who developed the apps and interfaces, built communities, earned *and* powered up so that the mainstreamed 80% were still able to find value here. That value requires distribution. Are 20% of the accounts responsible for 80% of the distribution? I don't know but I am pretty sure that Pareto's principle will apply quite well to Steem in many ways. are you in the 20% creating 80% of the community? 

If you were a long-term investor here, would you want to know if who you were investing in was a long-term thinker too? Words are largely empty and at some point, people need to show their hands. How many are bluffing? 

Most likely 80%. 

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]