STEEM is a Blockchain of MUTUAL Delegation,
it works on DELEGATED Proof-of-Stake!
No Delegation - No new STEEM coins, nor rewards.

Recently I have been given a kind support from a fellow Steemian @simplymike : I've got a generous SP delegation which boosted my account Steem Power to 100% ! This has enabled me to post more regularly on Steemit than I could previously, without waiting for my RC (aka "Mana") to recharge sufficiently and without worrying about spending too much of my of RC on other activities (curation aka upvotes of others' posts, participating in some discussions, etc).

As I've written in one my recent post, the whole new unexpected "RC" thing of incurring de facto Costs for each and every even smallest action here on Steemit - it was quite both shocking and frustrating. Which to me somehow boiled down to: "Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them" and "rich getting richer".

"Invest just to be able to register, to post, to comment, to like"

It was concisely explained in one article:

No Steem Power, No Resource Credits?

Yup. You gotta have some stored juice to interact with the blockchain.

I've made some brief search on this subject and found that there are some other people who feels similarly about it and exchanged some thoughts with them. Here are some good points made:

What a huge mess this is! I'm am watching redfish delegate their sp to noobs they brought in right now and then they both die. Yes, we are really at a point where people with 100 sp are trying to save the place. Good grief!
At the same time, I see a comment in one of my steemit fb groups asking if it really true that you have to "buy in" just to be able to comment here. Several people say "Yes!" The person replies that steemit is an obvious scam and decides to stay on intsy and fb where you can comment for free...
now if you make one post and 5 comments with that 15 sp, your rc is dead for a week. The common advice I am seeing is for people to "buy in" for 100 sp. This is scamworthy advice to someone looking for a social media platform to post on...
Content creators are normally not asked to "invest" in the platform in order to make comments on it if that is the point your are making...
it used to be that they could just wait a while, grow their power back and not screw up again. Now they need to "invest" or somehow get charity if they want to work here while new.

This is intentional. It's greed from the centralised masters, the devs, witnesses, they are all in the same boat. Thats why this website stays as it is, no innovation, no updates, nothing nada....
Because the blockchain is growing and growing, the costs to keep it running is hitting their profits... so they went some steps further... invent resource credits...

(I recommend reading the whole discussion in comments in there)

Shortly after I've come upon the blog post of Mike Janssens, taken my own chance and participated in that announced Contest and surprisingly got a delegation (sort of a SP sponsorship). This has inspired me to do some further research on this subject matter of Delegation. I feel (I might be wrong) it is not discussed as much as other forms of "engaging with community" (or "with blockchain") : upvotinng (or curation), resteeming, following and posting.

First from the FAQ, for those who may not know it yet: What is delegated Steem Power?

When a user is delegated Steem Power - their bandwidth, content votes, and curation rewards are calculated as if it were their own Steem Power

In other words, those who doesn't have much or very little SP in their accounts are given an option to use such a sort of "borrowed" SP, which has been "Delegated" to them by others. (Steem itself also gives some small portion for newly registered members, like 15 SP)

Word "Delegate" (or variations) is used quite a few times in FAQ. Apparently Delegation is one of the central fundamental part of the entire Steem project as well as the Steemit platform. Can even say that without Delegation - there won't be STEEM!

Delegated Proof of Stake?

Delegated proof of stake - Block-creating accounts, called witnesses, are collectively approved by Steem stakeholders. Instead of relying on proof of work to find blocks, the Steem network actively schedules these accounts to improve the time between blocks to 3 seconds.

In fact it is one of the main principles of STEEM blockchain, can even say - what defines STEEM ! That's what emphasized in paragraph "How is Steem different from Bitcoin?", reading:

The "delegated proof of stake" model of using witnesses ... 90% of new STEEM coins are awarded to content producers, curators, and Steem Power holders.

Practically speaking those "Wintesses" themselves are "Delegated" certain votes by all other members through the process called "Witness Voting" (Each account can vote for up to 30 witnesses). Although these witnesses are not "delegated" any SP (or "Vests") from those members who "Vote" for them - but their "votes" are also another form of "Delegation": because they won't be "elected" as witnesses without obtaining sufficient "votes". THEN ONLY they become "Block-creator", i.e. holders of accounts which generate new STEEM coins through that "Delegated Proof of Stake". Then new coins are shared among all other Steemians in form of those various rewards (for posting, upvoting, etc.). So, it is kind of reciprocal, this whole "Delegation" thing!

Let's clarify and emphasize: according to those definitions, without "votes" (= delegation of trust?) no one can be "elected" a Witness; without that one can't generate new STEEM coins through DPOS (and be compensated for that in SP); without that neither any other people may get any rewards: authors, curators, STEEM holders.

The whole STEEM system is build upon, rotates around and totally depends on this DELEGATION!

Therefore those few members who realize its importance are very much right in making their own personal efforts to Delegate some part of SP to others, especially new members and / or those with low SP. Here are just a few Quotes:

Call to delegation

A certain amount of Steem Power is the key to success for this project. We hope and plan to bring masses of new users to the Steem blockchain in the near future... if we have lots of members, a high Steem Power is necessary to upvote all of them with more than dust...
We decided to treat delegators as investors and offer them a ROI...

Wow! that's fantastic IMO: it would hopefully enthuse some whales and other SP-wealthy to Delegate more to others, rather than just keep upvoting each others in their "private rich clubs" (aka "trails" = Mutual Funds) for each and every silly picture, 1-2 sentences long posts and other ridiculous stuff which can hardly seriously consider as a Content AT ALL - what to speak about GOOD Content. At least they might see that Delegation can be no less good "Investment" as the STEEM HODLing (Delegated-Staking, yeah), posting and "curating". I mean, I can't blame people for desiring to make profit from their investments nor for considering their "vesting" (as it is called in FAQ) of STEEM into SP as an Investment - that's their money and their choice what to do with their SP. They also certainly make a considerable contribution into maintaining this whole STEEM blockchain and thus help each others to benefit from it too. After all, there is no doubt that many if not most came here with hopes to Earn something - it's just some has chosen (and could afford to) actually "Vest" their STEEM coins here into Steemit for faster and more effective results and there is nothing wrong with that. (Although all other issues, as "upvotes" / resteems/ folllowing selling and reselling, etc, that whole "economy" - it is already another matter). So, making such incentives for "Investment" focused people - IMO it is a good effort.

Interesting Development : RC Delegation is coming

https://steemit.com/exyle/@exyle/cbrovez5
https://steemit.com/steem/@therealwolf/proposal-for-resource-credit-delegationsrc-delegations-
https://steemit.com/steem/@therealwolf/sneakpeak-delegation-pools
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@holger80/code-review-of-changes-since-0-20-5-resource-pool-delegations-were-added
https://steemit.com/busy/@taskmaster4450/resource-credit-delegation-being-worked-on

Under the new system, RC could be delegated which is not a penalty to a larger account since it is basically excess. From what I can see, anyone with 1K SP or more basically will not use up their daily allotment. RC recharges at the same rate as SP...
The entire idea behind the Resource Credits was to establish a system which used market conditions to establish the cost of each activity. Built in was a way for the Witnesses to alter the system if things were shown to be not reaching an equilibrium that created the results desired.

---

Some more thought-provoking quotes from Mike Janssens:

Do You Care?

New SteemIt users are doomed. The new RCsystem takes away their chances to grow. You can help!

No Future

If new accounts can't work there way up without investing and are limited to 3 comments a day, we can't expect them to stay.
And if no new users are willing to pay for their account, and pay again for every post or comment they put out, SteemIt will die a lonesome death.
If nothing changes, the platform I became to love so much is doomed.
(https://steemit.com/steem-bounty/@simplymike/steem-bounty-do-you-care-earn-with-one-simple-click)

So, I would like to encourage people to read the rest of that post - it provides some good ideas of how one can help newbies with Delegated SP. Especially those who have plenty of SP and are anyway unable to use it all up alone on daily basis! :)
(here is just one example )

"Delegate or Perish" !

Once I've heard a phrase, sort of a motto by some missionaries or those who heard it from them: "Recruit or Perish!" Today it has modified for me into the phrase more related to this SteemIt community: "Delegate or Perish!" Because as said in those above quotes - without new members this whole "social network" is DOOMED. Who will upvote all those endless daily 1-sentence and 1-picture long posts ? LOL
At the same time, without sufficient SP new members won't have enough RC even to register on SteemIt - what to speak about Upvote all those too "prolific authors". :D

Your thoughts, comments are appreciated!
If you liked it and found something useful -
please do share, upvote, resteem!

There are more related posts in Delegate-tag feed category.
Good to see that there are quite a few posts dedicated to this matter.

Few more Delegation Related posts:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@raised2b/how-to-undelegate-steem-power-in-4-easy-steps
https://busy.org/@syfulcomet/how-to-delegate-and-undelegated-your-steem-power-sp-by-few-clicks
https://steemit.com/steem/@johnasp96/how-to-undelegate-steem-power-step-by-step
https://steemmaker.com/delegate-undelegate-steem-power/

Useful !
https://steemit.com/steemit/@marblely/calculating-the-costs-of-your-actions-in-steemit-after-hf20
https://steemit.com/steem/@valth/guide-check-your-resource-credits-to-see-how-many-posts-votes-and-transactions-you-can-do
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitdev/developer-guide-resource-credit-system
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/replacing-bandwidth-on-the-steem-blockchain-with-resource-credits-what-is-this-and-why-do-you-need-to-know-about-it