I read a really interesting post by @exyle yesterday about delegations to bid bots and dapps, and how bid bots could fall in the future. Read the full post here. It got me thinking about my own delegation strategy, and the various decisions that affect who we delegate to.

Why delegate?

First lets quickly look at a few reasons that you might want to delegate that hard earned SP of yours. Delegation offers users a way to make some passive income in return for 'leasing' their SP to other users. In the past this was primarily to bid bots seeking massive SP which they could in turn sell as upvotes. Although bid dots seem to offer the best returns on investment, more and more users are becoming more conscious of how they affect the Steem blockchain, and looking for alternatives.

There are many other great dapps that Steemians can delegate to, each with specific benefits to delegators. Dapps that are developing their own SMT often offer extra tokens for delegation, while others offer regular upvotes. When delegating to a dapp, I find that it is important to consider the future of the dapp (especially if they reward you with their native token).

How much to delegate?

The golden rule is to ensure that there is enough SP left in your account after delegations to ensure that you can keep transacting on the Steem blockchain. This number depends on how active you are as a Steemian - some say as little as 50SP can be enough, but I am more of a heavy user and find that having atleast 100SP is more safe.

As the ammount of SP you have in your account is directly related to your upvote value, this is another facotr to consider. I generally try and grow my SP slowly, and thus will generally grow more than I delegate - for example for every 100SP I earn, I might delegate 50SP. This is a personal decision and everyone is different - what works for me might not work for you!

Who to delegate to?

Alright now we are ready to talk about some different options in terms of who to delegate to. As I mentioned above you can delegate to bid bots, which will probably offer the best return, but may not be the best option for everyone. I wont go through the different bots and what they offer (because I havent looked!), but you can generally check out their blog/website/Discord server to find out their delegation guidelines.

Actifit

@actifit is a dapp that I am a bit of a cheerleader for, and was the first dapp that I ever delegated to! In return for my delegation I recieve daily actifit tokens, and it also increases my daily score for my posts (which will increase the value of votes I receieve on my actifit posts). The reason I chose to delegate to Actifit was becuase I think they have a solid working project, that offers and incentivises users for something they would already be doing. The great team are always very busy working on updates, and I am confident that Actifit will have a bright future ahead of itself.

Various other dapps worthy of delegation

Although I havent delegated to any other dapps yet (and thus don't know the full details), there are many other dapps I have on my radar which I will be investigating for delegation in the future. I tend to stick to dapps that I actually use, or that I can see a real use case for in the future.

I am a massive fan of @steemhunt and they will probably be the next team that I look into for delegation. I post a hunt most days, and think that delegating could be a great way to increase my HUNT tokens while also supporting a great project. @dlike is another project I have been following closely, and seems to be gaining some traction. I like that Dlike is a simple easy to use platform, and could help bridge the gap between traditional social media like Facebook and Intstagram (where there is a focus on sharing content), and blockchain based social media like Steem.

I have also just increased my delegation to @steem-ua, which offer regular upvotes on your posts based on your Steem-UA score - which is calculated through an algorithm based on interactions on the Steem blockchain. What I like about this is that its a much more fair way of offering upvotes than through bid bots, and it encoruages and rewards interactions on Steem.

Conclusion

As accounts grow, delegation is something to consider as a way to not only help projects and dapps grow, but also to earn some passive rewards. It is important to think about why you are delegating, how much you are delegating and who you will be delegating to.

I would love your thoughts on this - who are you delegating to and why?