Today, the one millionth account was created on the Steem blockchain!
The number of new users joining the Steem platform each day continues to grow, and at an increasing rate. More impressive than the number of accounts, however, is the amount of user activity we have.
According to etherscan.io, there are currently around 33,000,000 unique ETH addresses. However, it is difficult to compare the number of Steem addresses with the number of Ethereum addresses since the two protocols are used in different ways.
Typically, most Steem users create a single account which is used for the majority of their activity. On Ethereum it is common practice for individual users to create hundreds or even thousands of wallet addresses. For example, ETH users often create a new wallet address each time they perform a token transfer. While some Steem users do create multiple accounts, users tend to favor a single account due to the fact that Steem is a stake-based social blockchain. They typically use this single account to communicate with other users and to accumulate Steem Power along with its resultant influence. For this reason, the number of Steem accounts is a much closer representation of the number of actual users than the number of ETH addresses.
For example, despite the seemingly massive number of accounts on Ethereum according to DAppBoard, Crytpokitties remains the most active application on Ethereum, with a 24-hour “Activity” of only 2,777 events (as of May 16th). For comparison, eSteem (a mobile application for Steem) averaged 9,372 transactions per day over the last 7 days. That’s over three times as much activity as Ethereum’s most successful application!
A Cambridge study estimated that there were around 2.9 - 5.8 million unique active users of cryptocurrency wallets, and the number is continuing to increase exponentially. Steem is well-positioned to take advantage of this influx of attention due to its outsized representation with respect to real-world applications. Unlike many of the “vaporware” projects out there, Steem already has a large number of functioning apps that ordinary people are using every day of their lives.
As the only protocol on top of which entrepreneurs are building applications that “real people” can use, Steem is also helping to legitimize the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole. Applications such as busy.org, d.tube, and dlive.io are the kind of websites that people are familiar with and comfortable telling their friends and family about. Instead of cryptocurrency being some abstract concept that people hear about on the news, Steem turns it into something real, thereby helping to bring attention to other legitimate projects in the space.
As more entrepreneurs learn about Steem, they will create an ever-increasing number of innovative applications that provide even more value to people all over the world. Thanks to our ongoing developer portal work there are now more resources than ever to assist those developers, making building on Steem even easier. These new applications will draw in even more users, which will in turn make Steem even more attractive to new entrepreneurs looking to bootstrap their own applications.
We feel uniquely privileged to be playing our part in this positive feedback loop, within which growth leads to ever more growth, and are incredibly excited to see what amazing applications will emerge from this process and this community.
Steem on,
Team Steemit
