The Great Steem Siphon: Inside the 31-Million SP Extraction Cartel Draining the Blockchain
The Great Steem Siphon: Inside the 31-Million SP Extraction Cartel Draining the Blockchain
By: @rvpokar
A Forensic Investigation into Systematic Reward Pool Extraction, Sybil Cron-Farming, and the Technocratic Smokescreen on Steem L1
The first thing you need to understand about modern financial extraction is that it never arrives wearing a burglar’s mask. It does not smash windows or kick down doors. In the modern era, whether you are examining toxic debt bundled by Wall Street investment desks or inflationary reward pools on a delegated-proof-of-stake blockchain, the grift always arrives wrapped in the pious language of public benevolence, shielded by a dense layer of technocratic jargon.
On the Steem blockchain, that jargon has names you have heard repeated until your eyes glaze over: delegation pooling, curation trails, resource credit optimization, VESTS consolidation, tier-based curation. It sounds complicated. It sounds boring. It sounds like high-minded engineering designed to optimize blockchain health.
Strip away the vocabulary, however, and what you find underneath is neither innovative nor complex. What you find is the oldest confidence game in financial history: an automated vacuum cleaner disguised as a community charity, systematically looting a shared commons while using the well-meaning public as human camouflage.
For years, the narrative broadcast to the ecosystem by @rme and the leadership of the "Amar Bangla Blog" (ABB) has been a heartwarming sermon of Web3 philanthropy: a regional collective lifting up creators across South Asia, rewarding grassroots cultural expression, and building an inclusive digital economy.
The blockchain’s immutable ledger reveals an entirely different reality.
Following an exhaustive forensic audit of consensus state records, account recovery hierarchies, voting distributions, and transaction logs, we can now publish the complete, uncensored architectural autopsy of the syndicate operated by @rme.
It is not a grassroots community. It is a centralized, mechanized extraction enterprise that has quietly accumulated over 31.29 Million Steem Power (SP) in direct principal, monopolized over 33.5 Million SP in operational voting power, and siphoned a hoarded private treasury of 1,079,362 Liquid STEEM and 195,153 Liquid SBD—valued at roughly $700,000 USD in liquid assets alone—directly out of the inflation pool that belongs to every stakeholder on this network.
Here is how the machinery operates, who pulls the levers, and the cold cryptographic receipts that prove it.
I. The Human Camouflage: The Real Victims of the Grift
Before examining the balance sheets, we must establish the human reality of this blockchain, because the architects of this scheme rely on a very specific moral defense whenever questioned: “If you critique us, you are attacking third-world creators who rely on Steem for their livelihood.”
This is a cynical, weaponized inversion of the truth.
The everyday creators in Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, or Venezuela who sit at their phones for hours drafting cultural essays, photographing local architecture, and sharing personal stories to earn a few liquid cents are not the perpetrators of this crisis. They are honest, hard-working participants trying to build a presence in Web3.
The tragedy—and the deep cruelty of this system—is that these everyday creators are being used as human shields.
While hundreds of authentic users grind every single day to compete for fractions of a cent, their collective presence serves as the statistical backdrop—the "active community" metrics—that allows a tiny, tightly organized cabal of roughly a dozen individuals to park massive multi-million-SP voting cannons over their own private bot network and silently pull out tens of thousands of dollars each month.
The everyday writers get the pennies and the moral blame; the syndicate gets the balance sheet.
II. The Weapon: The "Synthetic Daily Nine" Cron Fleet
If you want to understand how brazen the extraction is, you do not need an advanced degree in computer science. You only need to look at the clock.
Between March 20 and March 21, 2024, the official community account @amarbanglablog executed a series of create_claimed_account operations, minting a cluster of synthetic accounts. Among them were nine specific identities:
@curious.mind@steem-articles@heartwarming@ocean-trench@darklights@un-stoppable@thinking.element@ritzy-writer@raintears
Every single one of these accounts carries the exact same recovery authority: amarbanglablog. Every single one holds roughly 66,000 Steem Power (~107 Million VESTS). And every single one holds a hoarded balance of roughly 50,000 to 53,000 liquid STEEM.
Now, examine the publication timestamps of their posts on November 3, 2026:
- 15:50:00 UTC –
@curious.mindpublishes (Permlink:post-928-1793721000) - 15:55:00 UTC –
@steem-articlespublishes (Permlink:post-929-1793721300) - 16:00:00 UTC –
@heartwarmingpublishes (Permlink:post-836-1793721600) - 16:05:00 UTC –
@ocean-trenchpublishes (Permlink:post-837-1793721900) - 16:10:00 UTC –
@darklightspublishes (Permlink:post-957-1793722200) - 16:15:00 UTC –
@un-stoppablepublishes (Permlink:post-958-1793722500)
Notice the pattern?
They publish precisely every 5 minutes on the second.
Notice the UNIX timestamps embedded directly in their permlinks: 1793721000, 1793721300, 1793721600, 1793721900, 1793722200, 1793722500—each separated by exactly 300 seconds.
The content consists of generic, formulaic reflections accompanied by stock imagery, each concluding with the exact same closing markdown banner: ![ABB.gif].
This is not human creative inspiration striking nine different authors across different cities in rhythmic, five-minute intervals. This is a headless server running a script on an automated cron schedule.
And what happens the moment this robotic assembly line drops its daily batch onto the chain?
The syndicate’s primary voting dreadnought—@oppps, armed with 11.59 Million Effective Steem Power—fires a 100.0% maximum-weight upvote into each post within minutes. Secondary vehicles like @shy-fox (5.93M Effective SP) and @abb-curation (7.23M Effective SP) follow in synchronized lockstep.
The resulting payouts:
@curious.mind: 86.44 SBD@steem-articles: 86.07 SBD@heartwarming: 85.05 SBD@ocean-trench: 83.20 SBD@darklights: 84.67 SBD@un-stoppable: 81.25 SBD@thinking.element: 94.71 SBD@ritzy-writer: 91.46 SBD@raintears: 89.29 SBD
In a single afternoon, just one post each from these nine synthetic identities pulled 782.19 SBD out of the reward pool.
That is ~23,400 SBD per month (approximately $65,000 to $75,000 USD at current market valuations) drained from the inflation pool by nine automated scripts.
III. The Paper Trail: The Recovery Key Tree and the 15-Minute Batch
In blockchain forensics, users can invent dozens of pseudonyms, but they cannot alter their account recovery authorities or backdate their broadcast timestamps.
Every Steem account has an immutable on-chain property: recovery_account. When an account is created, the entity holding the master recovery authority is the structural owner of that identity.
When you map the recovery authorities across this cluster, the facade of a "decentralized community" dissolves:
@rmeholds the master keys.@rmeis the direct recovery account for@oppps,@abb-curation,@bangla.witness,@abb-school,@tron-fan-club,@rex-sumon,@moh.arif,@kingporos, and@hafizullah.@amarbanglablogis the direct recovery account for all 9 synthetic farming bots (@ocean-trench,@darklights, etc.), the 4 automated report bots (@boc-reports,@sa-reports,@abbc-reports,@tfc-reports), and the secondary treasury@puss.coin.@puss.coinin turn serves as the recovery account for tertiary satellites:@wise-donkey,@steeminate,@mariyaafrin, and@tanvirahammad10.
It is a single, centrally controlled, multi-tiered corporate hierarchy:
[@rme] (Master Authority / 15.4M SP)
|
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| | |
[Mega Curation Cannons] [The Synthetic Daily Nine] [Human Admin Core]
• @oppps (11.59M Eff SP) • @ocean-trench (~83 SBD/day) • @hafizullah (Exec Admin)
• @shy-fox (5.93M Eff SP) • @darklights (~85 SBD/day) • @moh.arif (Dev/Witness)
• @abb-curation (7.23M SP) • @un-stoppable (~81 SBD/day) • @blacks (Ops Head - India)
• @puss.coin (3.28M SP) • @raintears (~89 SBD/day) • @rex-sumon (Compliance)
• @tron-fan-club (1.33M SP) • @heartwarming (~85 SBD/day) • @kingporos (Admin - India)
• @bangla.witness (604k SP) • @steem-articles (~86 SBD/day) • @swagata21 (Admin - India)
• @thinking.element (~95 SBD/day) • @winkles (Admin - India)
• @curious.mind (~86 SBD/day) • @nusuranur (Admin - BD)
• @ritzy-writer (~91 SBD/day) • @shuvo35 (Marketing)
If any doubt remained as to whether these accounts are managed by independent individuals or operated from a single central console, the blockchain provided definitive proof on March 29, 2026.
Between timestamps 1774779720 and 1774781124—a window of exactly 15 minutes—fifteen supposedly distinct accounts executed mass delegations into @oppps:
@rme: 4,047,997 SP@hungry-griffin: 1,360,206 SP@abb-curation: 1,287,932 SP@shy-fox: 1,046,643 SP@puss.coin: 622,930 SP@tron-fan-club: 235,482 SP@amarbanglablog: 182,067 SP@tanuja: 150,695 SP@photoman: 146,109 SP@abb-school: 117,716 SP@abb-fun: 84,501 SP@abb-featured: 71,753 SP@royalmacro: 66,164 SP@curators: 36,047 SP@abuse-watcher: 28,884 SP
Fifteen separate entities across different timezones do not spontaneously coordinate delegations to the exact same recipient within 900 seconds. This is the unmistakable signature of a single operator running a batch script.
IV. The Smokescreen Ratio: 100% Extraction vs. 1% Dust
To keep external delegators, community witnesses, and voters pacified, the syndicate employs an optics smokescreen that is methodically calculated.
When we pulled the complete 30-day voting history of @oppps (11.59M Effective SP), the data revealed a stark two-tier caste system:
Tier 1: The Extraction Core (100.0% Maximum Upvote Weight)
@rme: 30 votes, ALL 30 at 100.0%@abbc-reports: 30 votes, ALL 30 at 100.0%@sa-reports: 30 votes, ALL 30 at 100.0%@boc-reports: 30 votes, ALL 30 at 100.0%@tfc-reports: 30 votes, ALL 30 at 100.0%@puss.coin: 27 votes, ALL 27 at 100.0%@ocean-trench: 24 votes, ALL 24 at 100.0%@un-stoppable: 22 votes, ALL 22 at 100.0%@steem-articles: 21 votes, ALL 21 at 100.0%@heartwarming: 21 votes, ALL 21 at 100.0%@raintears: 21 votes, ALL 21 at 100.0%@curious.mind: 21 votes, ALL 21 at 100.0%@thinking.element: 18 votes, ALL 18 at 100.0%@darklights: 17 votes, ALL 17 at 100.0%@ritzy-writer: 15 votes, ALL 15 at 100.0%
Tier 2: The Optics Smokescreen (1.0% to 2.0% Dust Votes)
@justyy: 58 votes, average weight: 1.0%@haejin: 50 votes, average weight: 2.0%@hafizullah: 31 votes, **average