I'm not really surprised. Too many users are confused with the system here. Beyond the very basic functions, the platform is not very intuitive. You have to learn it like a program.

On top comes the promise of plenty of $$, but then they see 1-2 Cents or less and not even 5 clicks on their content.

And even if someone learns the functionalities of the platform, it does neither mean success for you, nor does it mean people like it more. In fact I have seen several users giving up, because of the strange features this platform offers, like the distortion through upvote bots.

They are not facilitating the "proof of brain" but much more circumvent it and empty the reward pool. It's a bit like baking a sand cake when you're hungry.

That's why I wanted to ask if you could do an analysis about the upvote bots. At least the big ones that are ran by closed circles seem to be very hazardous to me: It would be interesting to see:

• how much they grab from the daily reward pool via the payments for upvotes
• if their business is growing (absolute and relative as well as to other projects and the reward pool itself)
• whether the bots are growing more than inflation.
• if the growth is correlated with the Steem/SBD inflation (apparently, they've increased the one of SBD at the end of 2017).
• to what extend they reinduce their profits into the system, how much they lock up in their holding accounts and how much they pay out (and the influence on the market price of the coin)

I know, that's a lot. Maybe one or two aspects would be interesting to see some light shed on. But I see this as a very important aspect for the future of the platform. Something seems off with the activities of the bots and we should know what.

Thanks a lot!