In the past few weeks, I have been taking a look at the various 'pay for vote' bots in order to see how much of the traffic directed to these is used for self voting. Tonight, (or today, depending on where in the world you are) we will be looking at @booster
This is how @booster works:
First, a few disclaimers regarding the data below. Not all the transfers that go to @booster become a vote. If the bid is too low, or for other reasons, it is not accepted, and is rejected, sent back to the person who sent it.
Therefore, this analysis on @booster will look at the intent to self-vote via the transfer history, not the actual act of paying for a vote. This is a Minority Report style investigation, where intent to commit a crime is just as bad as doing the deed.
But first, the raw data:
Since its inception, there has been 23,156 Transfers to @booster
21,075 are Self Vote Attempts. (91.01%)
2081 are attempts to vote for someone else. (8.99%)
Let's have a look at those who have used @booster the most:
Top 25 Attempted Self Voters
| Self Voter | Attempts | Total Amount |
|---|---|---|
| hamzaoui | 3517 | 218.676 |
| digital-gypsy | 788 | 268.829 |
| flauwy | 601 | 620.748 |
| shehryar | 460 | 27.044 |
| bubusik | 416 | 1184.133 |
| pkvlogs | 406 | 1602.104 |
| aboutall | 352 | 26.897 |
| prashant | 323 | 495.265 |
| steemitbet | 322 | 921.747 |
| minnowhelp | 248 | 320.27 |
| chrisx | 238 | 22.215 |
| cryptokraze | 215 | 54.969 |
| stefanarud | 162 | 24.739 |
| better-life-tips | 141 | 20.748 |
| valerious | 124 | 1169.882 |
| randomvideos | 118 | 10.14 |
| naughtyhrn | 118 | 70.307 |
| hirennamera | 108 | 15.068 |
| healthyrecipe | 103 | 259 |
| farhanali | 102 | 5.569 |
| utfull | 90 | 5.4 |
| ura-soul | 89 | 713.85 |
| qasimwaqar | 89 | 32.45 |
| cryptopie | 88 | 20.926 |
| gringalicious | 87 | 594 |
Top 25 Attempted Votes for Others
| Other Voter | Attempts | Total Amount |
|---|---|---|
| banjo | 374 | 372.002 |
| bubusik | 110 | 245.003 |
| dzsupport | 109 | 5.2 |
| fairvote | 84 | 13.295 |
| hotasian | 75 | 314.77 |
| digital-gypsy | 68 | 27.442 |
| inertia | 42 | 168 |
| satfit | 31 | 406.012 |
| flauwy | 31 | 3.97 |
| livingwaters | 27 | 60 |
| ezblog | 25 | 53.03 |
| pkvlogs | 20 | 58.812 |
| gringalicious | 20 | 46 |
| chrisx | 20 | 10.4 |
| binarie | 19 | 19 |
| galactic123 | 19 | 5.43 |
| eroche | 18 | 36 |
| katiepelc | 18 | 64.999 |
| andersonpereira | 16 | 0.017 |
| btcvenom | 16 | 21.55 |
| naughtyhrn | 16 | 96.1 |
| pastzam | 15 | 5.5 |
| hastla | 13 | 45 |
| steemlover | 12 | 2.6 |
| welcomesteemians | 12 | 1.901 |
| mela | 12 | 1.2 |
I would love to see how many of the 23,156 transactions turned into votes. I do not yet know how to call the right query in mongodb in order to extract the historical votes of an account. If anyone can teach me that, I'd love to know, as this will help me in future investigations such as this one.
Let's consider the fact that @booster has made 13,061 posts. 23,156 transactions have come through to booster. Let's be generous and take way 50 posts for booster's status updates. We'll round it down, because I'm lazy with maths. 13000 comments presenting a vote. This means that only 56.14% of transfers to @booster result in a vote. That's 43.86% of transfers that get returned to attempted user.
That's an additional 10,156 transfers on the blockchain that don't really need to be there.
@booster is a pay-to-play voting bot; based on the drotto voting bot. It has the lowest altruistic ratio among its users versus the other bots I've looked at so far.
If there's a bot someone would like me to have a look at, please leave me a comment, and I'll add it to my future projects list.
As always, thanks for reading. :)
