Sometimes it is best to do a Year in Review. When we are here each day, it is easy to lose sight of what is taking place. For this reason, it might be best to review a few metrics to see how things changed.
Overall, I would say 2021 was a terrific year for Hive. We obviously had the explosion of Splinterlands and all the sign ups that came with that. There are now around 400K people playing that game daily.
That said, we will look at some of the "core" activities on Hive. How did we progress in that area.
We will start by using 
We can see we were bottoming out in this category a year ago. Let us call the range 10k-12K for that period.
For the past month, we are basically doing 25K-32K posts per day. The is more than a 100% jump from a year ago.
At this time last year, we were fluctuating but we can call it the 225K range.
Now we are running about 275K votes per day.
Here we see over a 20% jump.
The starting point for this was around 10,000 accounts transacting each day as we closed out 2020.
For the past month, our daily accounts are round the 15K area.
We experienced roughly a 50% jump.
Please note this does not include the Splinterlands' activity which is a Custom JSON transaction
For a couple years, I did a regular post detailing the changes in Hive token distribution in each category as well as the number of accounts. This was stopped as more people started to focus upon other options such as Hive-Engine tokens. This clouds the wealth distribution on Hive.
Nevertheless, it is a good time to take a look back to see where things were.
As a larger scale comparison, I am putting up some charts from when I started on Hive in August of 2017.
We start with the MVest distribution on 8/1/2017. For those unaware, this is how the levels of Whale, Orca, etc. are determined. Most often the focus is upon Hive Power but the technical aspect is actually the categories are determined by MVests.
Please note this also included the ninja-mined stake which since was removed from the active Hive circulation and locked in the Decentralized Hive Fund.
A year ago, here is what the breakdown looked like:
Today we see a much different story:
The Year-over-Year change looks like this:
Whales -19.6%
Orcas +31.35
Dolphins +14.99%
Minnows +10.23%
Planktons -4.89%
This is a rather large change. The Whales category lost a fair bit of influence, down just under 20%. We can see the Orcas really gained as a whole, helping to stabilize that aspect of the ecosystem. The Dolphins and Minnows also showed nice growth.
Here again, for reference, we will show the chart from 8/1/2017:
A year ago, the categories broke down as such:
Today we also see a different story.
The Year-over-Year change looks like this:
Whales -15.79%
Orcas +28.51%
Dolphins +12.56%
Minnows +5.73%
We will leave Planktons off this since many of those are accounts related to Splinterlands.
What is interesting is the percentage of MVests exceeds that of the accounts in all categories. For the Whales, we see a drop in accounts of 15.79% yet the MVest decline was over 19%. This means that of the Whales left, their percentage, in terms of the whole, was reduced. The reverse is true for the other three categories. One average, each account in those categories gained strength. In other words, the increase was not due solely to newer accounts joining that category.
This is some interesting data, something that I had not focused upon in a long time. When we step back, we see the change that took place. We saw nice growth in user activity, with more accounts participating. While it might not be the growth rate we all would like, it still is a rather large number. If we can duplicate this for a few years, we will be in fine shape by the middle of the decade.
The fact that the token distribution is spreading out is very exciting. Quite frankly, considering all the interest in Layer 2 project, I am a bit surprised it was that dramatic. Nevertheless, based upon this data, it is how it unfolded.
All of this leads to the simple conclusion that even outside Splinterlands, there was growth on the blockchain the past year. When we look at activity, accounts participating, and where the MVests (HP) is ending up, we can see the charts leveling out. This is what the passage of time coupled with consistent activity by a growing number of users does.
Thus, we can say that, in spite of the different spats that arise, the system is working on a collective level. Whales have less influence than a year ago whereas the Orcas, Dolphins, and Minnows have more.
We will see what 2022 holds in this regard.
Posts used for data and charts:
@penguinpablo/daily-hive-stats-report-tuesday-june-8-2021
@penguinpablo/daily-hive-stats-report-tuesday-december-28-2021
@arcange/hive-statistics-20201227-en
@arcange/hive-statistics-20211227-en
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