Great analysis on the ROI side of things here and appreciate all the effort you have put in.

Thanks.

@Quillfire couldn't have said it any better in my opinion adding that the indirect consequences of bidbots are the bulk of the story here.

That is the ultimate condequence, yes. But I'd wager that most of the people leaving the platform for this reason have no idea really how bidbots work. They look at the trending page and huff and puff. Some of that is laziness. They wonder why their posts aren't going anywhere when these mediocre posts rise to the top of the trending page. But they also don't stop to think that their own posting habits are keeping them from earning more. If you treat Steemit like Facebook, you'll get Facebook results. How much does Facebook pay, again?

That's not to say the bidbots aren't causing issues, but you can earn on Steemit even with the bidbot presence (I've proven that). In the real world, there are bad actors, hooligans, ne'er-do-wells, sucking up economic benefits like sponges and taking from those who produce, but that doesn't stop (even with so much entitlement going around) hard workers from migrating upward through the classes. Those who do have figured out how in spite of the obstacles. So if someone gets discouraged and leaves without bothering to investigate the playing field, it's partly because they had unrealistic expectations to begin with. You won't earn $100 for any post if you only have 20 followers and you post nothing but cat memes--unless you pay a bidbot.

I dare say your graph with dwindling user base numbers would mostly come from new users seeing how things work after diving a little deeper on the platform and checking out a week or two later.

There's no way to test this, but I wonder what it would look like in a bull market.

Drop in market has also had an impact I'm sure but the dwindling number of active users has only increased the concentration of bid bot accounts, making it more visible than before.

Unfortunately, true. And if it keeps going this direction, Steemit will become a pay-to-play game where only bidbot voters are making anything. If you don't pay the bidbots, you'll be left in the dust.

It really would be ace if the trending page was a true trending page based on manual curation initiatives like the ones you mentioned and a separate section for promoted content that uses bidbots. I doubt that will happen though.

Me too.