A couple months ago I began investigating masternodes, and proof of stake, and as a result of that research I bought about $1,000 USD of Social SEND tokens. Since that time I've been exploring stake rewards, masternode vs wallet, and here is what I have found.
First, Social Send is a cryptocurrency which aims to enable social media users to express gratitude and appreciation in a new way, instead of just upvoting, or "liking" a post, you can send a few tokens which carry some monetary value as a thank you, to support your favourite content creators directly.
It will operate like the Steem powered "Smart Media Tokens", or Redd coin.
How does staking work with SEND token?
With SEND, you can either acquire 6,250 tokens and set up a masternode, or buy any number of SEND tokens, put them in the SEND wallet and leave it open with staking "active", either way you will receive staking rewards.
Masternodes:
If you intend to set up a masternode, you will likely require a "Virtual Private Server" (VPS), I set one up through https://www.vultr.com/, their pricing was competitive, and it was very easy. However, in the end I decided to close my VPS and simply stake through the SEND desktop wallet, that way I could avoid the monthly VPS fees ($5.00)
Wallet Staking:
With wallet staking, you do not require a VPS but you do require a computer that you can leave on overnight. The wallet runs in the background and as long as you do not care about the power drain, which I have not measured, or the CPU requirement, which I have not noticed, then you can earn some new SEND tokens.
With wallet staking the number of tokens you hold directly effects your likelihood of earning a stake reward, the math is more than I can explain but it boils down to this: more coins in your wallet, will increase your chance of earning staking rewards.
Wallet Staking vs. Masternodes:
Masternode Rewards:
According to https://masternodes.online/currencies/SEND/, a SEND masternode will provide 3290.0005 SEND per year, assuming it remains active for the entire year. That is approximately 9.013 SEND per day, which at current market value is $446.0023 USD, or 52.67% ROI.
As stated above if you run a masternode, you will likely require a VPS, which costs approximately $5.00 USD per month to maintain through Vultr.com. At $5.00/month, the VPS will cost $60.00 USD per year, which is 13.4% of your total annual returns for having a single SEND masternode, bringing the profitability way down. After VPS costs a SEND masternode will, according to https://masternodes.online/, earn you $386.0023 USD per year.
Wallet Rewards:
I currently own about 6,400 SEND and nearly every day I receive two stake rewards, which are currently paid out at 4.99998960 SEND tokens per payment. So I receive approximately 10 tokens per day, every day for holding my SEND tokens in the core wallet, and having my computer left on. That is one more token per day than I would receive if I had a masternode setup...
Not sure why that is, maybe that is a mistake in programming of reward allocation, but whatever the reason, clearly wallet staking is more profitable currently, particularly after you factor in the cost to maintain a VPS to support your masternode.
Other considerations:
- wallet staking uses some of my own computer's power, and therefore has some electrical cost that I have never calculated, this price would necessarily lower the ROI on wallet staking by some unknown degree.
- wallet staking has to be interrupted when I reboot my computer for updates or system crashes. VPS's will not experience the same degree of down time as they are monitored by the hosting company.
- setting up a VPS requires a degree of technical know-how that may be beyond some users
Conclusion:
Social SEND token provides some worthwhile staking rewards, and if you believe in their project and vision you may wish to consider investing.
If you decide to invest in SEND you should probably buy a Raspberry Pi kit for about $100 CDN, so that you have a discreet computer, with a lower power drain, that you can leave on all the time, in order to maximize uptime and staking rewards.
Currently the SEND staking rewards are profitable, and your ROI whether through a masternode, or wallet staking, should be in the ballpark of 40-50% annually, which is nothing to laugh about.
But when investing in a POS coin, do not fixate on the ROI, there are some really shite coins that will give you returns of many hundreds of percent, or more, but if the coin has no utility, no vision for application and adoption, then what good is it? I'd rather have 100 tokens I believe in than 1 million I don't.
I believe in SEND enough to risk $1,000 USD on it. I believe social media and online interactions of every kind can be improved by the implementation of a token like SEND. "Likes" are meaningless, tokens with a monetary value backing them show true appreciation and gratitude, while enabling your favourite content creators to feed themselves and focus on great content creation, perhaps full-time. This is why the model of Steemit is so powerful, and why I imagine SEND, Redd, or SMTs, may become gigantic in the future; their use case is so obviously important and revolutionary. So yes, even though the price of SEND has gone down since I invested, and even though it might go further down tomorrow, I am holding, I am staking, and I am excited for the future of SEND.
Comments, Questions?
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