A brief guide to delegating Steem PowersteemCreated with Sketch.

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

Reasons for delegating SP

With Hardfork 18 came a very interesting feature - the ability to Delegate Steem Power to another account. This has several benefits -

  1. Creating accounts with a lower fee.
  2. Donating your SP to curators you trust.
  3. Combining your SP from different accounts to a single voting account.

For most of us, it'll be 2. and 3. which are interesting. It allows whales to directly delegate SP to trusted curators, hence spreading influence far and wide. I fully expect this to become a trend once the payouts stabilise and a linear reward curve is rolled out.

Rules of delegating SP

There are several rules to delegating SP -

  1. You cannot delegate SP that is being powered down. You can't power down delegated SP. You can, however, delegate a portion of your SP and power down the rest.
  2. SP delegation works like a donation. The delegatee keeps all curation rewards.
  3. Effectively, for votes made the delegatee, it would seem like they own the SP.
  4. Delegators can cancel their delegations at any time, though it takes 7 days before they can use the SP themselves again.
  5. You can only delegate SP you own, not SP delegated to you.

How to delegate SP

Currently, there's no easy frontend on Steemit.com or elsewhere to delegate SP. Probably isn't much of a priority for the Steemit team either, with Communities being the top focus right now. So, you'll either need to use a script or cli_wallet.

Linux

If you run Linux, you can download a cli_wallet I have uploaded here - http://wikisend.com/download/735872/cli_wallet.zip

  1. Unzip, add executable permission chmod u+x cli_wallet

  2. Run cli_wallet cli_wallet -s wss://steemd.steemit.com

    2b. Use set_password yourpassword to add a password.
    2c. unlock yourpassword. Once you see unlocked >>> you're all set to go.

  3. Import active key. This will be your private active key, which you can copy from your Steemit.com wallet. import_key 5key

  4. Verify that your account has been added by using list_my_accounts

  5. Finally, delegate! delegate_vesting_shares youraccount delegateeaccount "xxxxx.xxxxxx VESTS" true (Tip: Copy paste the exact Vests from the list above to be sure the decimals and everything is correct. Of course, reduce as desired.)

  6. Verify on Steemd.com.

Windows

@clayop (feat. @gtg) has created a brief guide about using a Docker image for Windows. Check it out! https://steemit.com/til/@clayop/til-using-cliwallet-on-windows-with-docker

NEW: There's an even easier way to run it if you use Windows 10. No need for Docker or VM - it'll run natively! More here - https://steemit.com/steemhelp/@liberosist/using-cliwallet-and-steemd-natively-in-windows-10

Once you have got cli_wallet running, Steps 3 to 6 will be the same as above with Linux.

Script

I haven't tried this method myself, but @inertia has a script for those who don't want to set up cli_wallet. Do check it out here - https://steemit.com/radiator/@inertia/gator-rb-steem-power-delegation-script-for-steem

Delegation vs following

Currently, there are many trails and bots following vote. Delegating SP differs in numerous ways. This table attempts to point out the many differences.

First published here

FeatureStreemian/followingDelegated SP
Who gets curation rewards?Follower****Curator
Delegate to multiple curatorsYesYes
Voting strength decided by*FollowerCurator
Can delegate SP being powered down?YesNo
Can power down already delegated SP?YesNo
Follower can vote on other posts with delegated SP?YesNo
Delay between votesYes (bot speed)No**
Time to cancel delegationImmediate7 days***

*Though the follower/delegator can choose to delegate a set amount of SP.
**It would be as if the SP was yours - your vote counts the delegated SP. So, yes, if a whale delegates to a minnow, a minnow might see their vote push up the pending payout by several dollars.
***The delegation is canceled immediately, but it'll be 7 days before you can use the SP to vote again.
****The curator also earns rewards from their own SP. However, follower gets to keep all rewards from the delegated SP, depending on the position of the vote. The curator does see increased curation rewards contributed from votes added by the follower, but limited by the SP they own. In the case of Delegated SP method, curator keeps all curation rewards directly, from SP they own + delegated to them.

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I delegated some power to a user, on my wallet it says I have some of sp delegated. How do I know to whom it is delegated, is there a list somewhere?

It may well be from steemit themselves. If you created an account on steemit, then they start by delegating some SP to you so that your vote counts. Enjoy your delegation, it won't last!
To view the details; go to https://steemd.com/@mcurly , scroll to the last pageand you see you've been delegated 57kVests at your account creation

Delegate your SP to me and together we can rule the galaxy as Sith Lord and person he met on Steemit!

Begging for SP delegations is unbecoming of a true Sith Lord :)

"Begging"? MwaHaHaHaHaHa. You are hilarious!

Or perhaps there is something wrong with my communicator. Dennis! Get in here!

That was clearly and order.

Damn, gimme sp delegation

This really describes how I am feeling right now...

Just made a simple SP delegation tool based on steemconnect.

want steem power delegate, please help me to got the procedure @justyy

This tool is extremely useful! Thanks a lot for making it.

Glad you like it!

How to got steem power delegate, anyone help?

looks like useful thing! thank you )
would be great to repost it, but i hope i will find in the comments or responces )
have a good day!

this confuses me. I don't get the advantage and there are a lot of steps. ok, so I'm old...at least I'm here :-)

The advantage is a whale could think you're a good curator and donate their SP to you. So instead of generating cents on your vote, it would then be dollars. And of course, you'll earn that much higher curation rewards too. The other benefits wouldn't apply to most of us though.

Why would a whale, or any delegator for that matter, choose to do this? Out of generosity, or is it to have the delegatee serve as a kind of "proxy-curator" to up-vote content that the delegator would have theoretically aligned with and would have also up-voted if they had enough time?

Out of generosity would be a good reason. Though for megawhales like Steemit Inc employees, it'd also be in their best interest to diversify curation. That'll lead to better retention, a better trending page, user growth (assuming marketing is successful) and ultimately a higher price.

Of course, the delegatee is automatically a proxy curator.

Some whales may want to cut a deal where the delegatee/curator sends back a cut of curation rewards as liquid Steem over the long term.

Whales may also delegate SP to their sockpuppets. That said, this would all be visible on the blockchain, and abuse can be fought easily, so the preferred route for that is still powering up sockpuppet accounts individually.

Has this changed? Can I receive curation rewards if I delegate to someone now?

Where do I find whales who are ready to cut deal with curators? I have asked couple users but they are not interested, meh :(

oh ok, that makes sense. thank you! So how does the system separate MY SP from a whale's SP if for instance I wanted to Power down (which I'm not!)? And how long do you get to use it for?

You can't power down the whale's SP, of course. Neither can you delegate it forward. It is indefinite, up to the whale. But they can cancel it any time like I mentioned above. The system only considers the delegated SP as yours when you vote.

The delegated SP is also shown separately in your Steemit.com wallet under brackets. For example, you can see here - https://steemit.com/@curie/transfers . The account's owned SP is 38k SP, while the delegated SP is 333k.

thank you so much for the explanation! It makes things very clear now :-) It's like a 'boost'!

Boost, I like it! Sounds better than delegation :)

It could be called a PB...Power Boost!

Hi, good post!
I am still lost with delegating option.

What's the benefit to doing it? for instance... If I delegate the 10000 SP, what's the profit I take?

the benefit is that agreed by the two parties the delegate and delegate, the advantage is that the delegator always has full control because you can cancel at any time, would you be willing to delegate ?, if so speak with me I am looking for that they delegate me, the deal would be to send you an amount of earnings each week for example, we would have to do some calculation to know how it could benefit each other

This is great, thanks @liberosist! Here's hoping they integrate this alongside the Communities feature, I think there would be a lot of co-benefits between the two.

Communities will be very interesting, though it will have its own model for ownership, moderation, curation etc. I'm sure SP Delegation will play a part somewhere.

Correction: I just made a guide and the image is created by steemit. And for the code, @gtg helped me a lot :)

Thanks, corrected :)

Couple more to comment. 1) node.steem.ws doesn't support list_my_accounts (no account_by_key plugin). And 2) The digits should be six not five (e.g. xxx.xxxxxx VESTS)

Thanks! Will get that changed to steemd.steemit.com (I've tested that one - works) and add the sixth digit. Also, will add set_password.

Even with a linear reward curve, it might be nice to have UI support (or an app feature) that would help to calculate and visualize the effect of curation and up-vote earnings based on the delegation of a certain chunk of SP.

That would be a nice perk, yes. I hope to see the ability to delegate SP through the Steemit.com wallet, but statistics and visualisations have traditionally been the realm of third party apps. Would love to see such features built into apps like Steemstats.com or Steemwhales.com.

This is a very informative post. I'm going to resteem it so that I can see it in my blog. I'm not there yet, but I can see myself possibly delegating voting power at some point down the road. Gotta work on finding those trusted curators who see things pretty close to the way I do :)

Or, become a trusted curator yourself :)

Right. I was thinking about that, actually...

I want steem power delegate but don't know which source give this facilities, please give me an idea!!!

I just realized there is one more difference between following and delegated SP, than mentioned above:

In case someone follows 3 people with 10% VP each and they all vote on the same post, the old votes gets overwritten / skipped.

With delegated SP they would add up.

Good find! That'll only be true for the corner case of voting with a low strength. In any case, once you delegate, the voting % is out of your control, and that's really what is making the difference here. The net impact of SP is the same, as the low % votes also have a lower influence.

Of course, if one votes with 100%, the net effect will be the same whether you follow 3 people and get votes skipped or delegate fractions to all 3 totaling 100%.

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