A wealth-driven analysis of user engagement in Blockchain Online Social Media

Online social networks (OSNs) had a massive impact on sociality, but recently, due to increasing concerns, new solutions are being considered employing blockchain, giving birth to blockchain online social media (BOSMs). The primary motivation for using a blockchain is to introduce a reward system, which grants cryptocurrency to contributing users. BOSMs represent a new scenario, where social and economic activity is firmly tied, and therefore new user roles arise. In this paper, we propose an evaluation of user engagement in BOSMs by exploiting the users’ wealth. In detail, we analyse how the rewards of blockchain-based social platforms affect user activity. We consider the users of Steemit, as a case study. Our analysis shows that it is possible to classify users according to their strategy to accrue wealth over time.