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Well we all have a feeling about the #newsteem. Some are in favor, others are against! Most of this sentiment is based on how we do play the Steem game.
Were you an avid users of bidbots well then probably you are against!
Do you have some big accounts following you, well then you are probably in favor!
Do you have a shitload of Steem Power, then you are probably also in favor!
Are you struggling to get the post value above $0.5 or so, than you probably are against.
Many more situations can be written down!

Overall I do think that the sentiment within the group Orca and Whales are positive. In the Dolphin groups it is more or less neutral. At the bottom of the food chain most people are probably against!
The reason is simple! Depending on the stake you have, you will severely punished or rewarded. In some cases the increase in curating power does cover up the loss in author rewards, but for most users this isn’t the case.

So let’s try to create an objective view!

I did based my small investigation (if it is one) on the reports of @arcange and @penguinpablo!

Post and comments!

For this I did use the reports of @penguinpablo. The create a more or less objective view, I did select the data from Wednesday 07-08, Wednesday 11-09 and Wednesday 09-10.
In the beginning of August 38979 posts and comments were written. This was around 2 weeks before the HF. In the beginning of September, the posting and commenting activity already dropped with almost 15% (14.55 to be precise). It went down to 33305.
Now in October it has even dropped more to 32620 comments and posts. Which is a drop of only 3% compared to September, but almost 16.5% compared to before the Hardford. This is a lot, knowing that the user base did increase with a little bit more than 1%.

Votes

If we do compare the votes casted on those days, it gets even worse.
Starting with 509956 in August, dropping to 503118 in September and now in October it is only 376173. That is a decrease of 26.25%. That is huge!
Of course this all is correlated with the number of accounts transacting. Also here we do see it also only going downhill. In August we 41588 account performing an transaction on the blockchain, while now in October we are only with 33819. A drop of 18.7%.
So not only the user base did drop, but also the active users have become less active!

The drop in votes also can be explained because bidbots have been halted. Some bidbots had a huge following trail, so if the use of the bidbots decreases also the number of upvotes does decrease. Also vote selling has dropped, so some post went from 200+ upvotes to 30, because that don’t buy upvotes anymore.

This of course also will have an impact on the value of Steem. The less users we have, the less buy pressure their will be. The more users which will be leaving the more selling pressure will be created. Those 2 combined could cripple the value of Steem.

MVests per food chain segment in the steem ocean!

We are all aware that the user base can be split into more or less 5 groups! Red fish, minnow, dolphin, orca and whales.
The reports of @arcange does give an idea how many vests these groups have.
Here the data was token from 08-08, 08-09 and 08-10.

Mvests

Segment	08-08	08-09	08-10
Red Fish	13961	13920	13926
Minnow	28005	27744	27765
Dolphin	56669	57564	59097
Orca	87840	90315	95533
Whale	207038	206284	209995

number of accounts per segment

Segment	08-08	08-09	08-10
Red Fish	1283280	1304486	1314585
Minnow	9334	9278	9238
Dolphin	2074	2119	2169
Orca	335	340	358
Whale	36	37	39

So the whales and the Orcas seems to be the winner of #newsteem! Yes, I do know that this isn’t only correlated with newsteem but there is of course also the possibility that some of the Dolphins and Orca did buy a shitload of Steem to power up and move up a segment!
At the moment 75,19% of all Steem power is divided by the Whales and Orcas. This means that 0.03% of the user do control 75% the power. While I don’t have idea problem with this, this isn’t exactly a healthy situation In my opinion. This opens the doors for dictatorship. So we should hope that this group doesn’t only think about their steem journey, but doesn’t destroy the lower parts of the foodchain!
A good sign however is that the group of minnow is shrinking. This means that some of those did move up toward dolphin level.
Another good indication is that the dormant voting power of the Orca and Whale group did decrease.
In September 118725 Mvest were sleeping, now in October this has decrease towards 115871. Meaning that more VP is used.

Conclusion

You can look at this figures how you want! You can interpret them how you want. That is the beauty of Metrics than be used in favor or against your opinion! We do see this in the political world year in, year out! It is like the glass is half empty or half full!
So, yes some of the bigger accounts did start to spread some upvotes towards the lower segments! But don’t hurry too soon! Getting a nice, juice and sweet upvote is rare. If will feel like winning the lottery, but don’t be surprised if this was a onetime action!
Yes the number of posts did decrease so it is easier to be seen and get noticed, there is an increased chance of getting such an upvote but if you haven’t been noticed by one of these account in the past 2 year, they probably won’t notice you now either!
People keep telling me that quality will be noticed and for sure consistent quality! But quality isn’t the only thing that matters! The topic in some cases is more important than the quality of an article! Take me for instance. Most of my posts are sports related, mainly about my own opinion about the Belgian Jupiler Pro League. It doesn’t matter how good my opinion is written down, it won’t be noticed by many! And to bad for me there are no whales or Orcas interested in the Belgium Jupiler Pro League!
I know in advance that with writing those posts I will never get above the linear reward curve! This linear reward curve is something I really don’t understand! The people who do upvote my posts are punished because I don’t reach the linear reward curve. So they would be better off upvoting posts of Authors who do beat the reward curve time after time! Their vote will have much more value on those posts! We all know the math behind this!
My posts which do score the best are about Steem.

We also have the downvotes! It is crazy how some people do use this power. I do get frequently donwvotes for some accounts. These accounts are just spreading downvotes around on the blockchain, no idea why! But it is what it is!
We now also have downvote trails, which I do find dangerous. Yes everybody is allowed to use their free downvotes like they desire. But why giving away this power to a downvote trail, you have no idea what you will be downvoting and why! Was it a personal downvote, a downvote based on the use of bid or tribe bots, plagiarism or so! You have no clue at all!
Well the power from the bidbots have shifted to the whales and orcas, I do hope they use this power wisely!

Yes, there are some good things about the HF or #newsteem. But like I wrote in the beginning it all depends on the situation which you are in!
Make your own conclusion and decided for yourself why you are here on the Steem Blockchain! And act according to this!
Enough ranting from me! I whish you all a nice day!

Cheers.
Peter