Delegating Steem Power

In HF18 a new feature was introduced called “delegation” with this feature you are able to lend part of your Steem Power to another account.

Delegating Steem Power is nothing more than lending your Steem Power to another account. By doing this you are adding your Steem Power to theirs so that their account gains more voting Power. The account that you have delegated your Steem Power to can use the delegated Steem Power as they see fit. It is important to know that the account that you delegated your Steem Power to is using it wisely. You can stop the delegation at any time but remember that it will take 7 days before you can use the delegated Steem Power again.

It is also good to remember that the curation rewards of the delegated Steem Power will go to the account you delegated your Steem Power to, so unless you have used Streemian you will not receive the curation rewards earned by the votes that were used with your delegated SP.

When you delegate Steem Power you will notice that your voting power will decrease, which is normal because you have less Steem Power available. On your Steemit Wallet page you will see your Steem Power and underneath it a negative number in brackets, this is the amount of delegated Steem Power.

For example: My current Steem Power is 2,554.39 SP ( 5,163.74 + 152.17 - 2,761.51 )
152.17 SP is delegated to me (Hive account@cheychey and Hive account@sherryblossom delegated their Steem Power to me because they are not that very active). 2,7651.51 SP is being delegated by me to Hive account@qurator, Hive account@make-a-whale, Hive account@themothership and Hive account@a11y.

There are several reasons for delegating your Steem Power:

Support
You can delegate your Steem Power to an account that is helping others, good examples are curator teams like Hive account@curie or Hive account@qurator. By supporting these accounts you are actively promoting quality content. These curators are experts in finding new talent and great content on Steemit. In my case I am delegating SP to Hive account@qurator because of their great efforts in supporting quality content on the platform. My believe is that Hive account@qurator is much better at curating than me and that my SP is much better hands (curation-wise).

I have delegated to the #thealliance project Hive account@themothership and Hive account@a11ly to support the Alliance community. This way I know that part of my SP is used to reward the great community members of #thealliance.

You are not using it anyway
2 of my family members started out on Steemit but after a while became less active. Now all that SP was wasting away doing nothing. So I convinced them to delegate their SP to me so that I could put their Steem Power to some good use. This is also a great strategy for those who only have Steem as an investment. Just letting your SP sit in your wallet without ever using it is a real waste.

Get something in return
Delegating Steem Power to a project can also mean that you get something in return. The Hive account@make-a-whale project is a good example. By delegating SP to Hive account@make-a-whale you are helping to grow a whale and in doing so the whale will reward you with upvotes. The same goes for Hive account@qurator where you get upvotes in return for you renting out your precious Steem Power. It’s a win-win, you are supporting a great project and getting upvotes in return.

There are a couple of ways to delegate Steem Power but the most uncomplicated way of delegating SP has to be using Steem World.

When you go to the site of Steem World all you have to do is enter you Steem account to see your stats.
On the left side of the screen you will see a section “Balances”. Here you will see some interesting numbers relating to your Steem Power and also 3 options:

• Redeem Rewards

• Power up

• Delegate SP

Now these are self explanatory, Redeem Rewards lets you collect your rewards, with Power Up you can turn your Steem into Steem Power.

But the thing we are focusing on now is “Delegate SP”, just click on the button and a window will pop up. Just fill in the account you want to delegate your Steem Power to and the amount you want to delegate, click “OK” to round things off. You will be asked to provide your active key (Find out more about Keys) and after confirming your action you will have successfully delegated your Steem Power.

Steem Power is also a good tool for keeping track of your delegations. On the left side menu there is also a section called “Delegation Out” , here you can view and even edit your outgoing delegations.

Unfortunately, the incoming delegation section is not available at time of writing.

There are a lot of benefits to delegating your Steem Power but the most important reason is supporting good causes and your fellow Steemians. You should be careful who you are lending your precious Steem Power though!
Steem World’s delegation option makes the whole delegating process very easy, with a few clicks you can delegate your Steem Power to anyone you like and manage your delegations without worries.

Read more about: SteemWorld |