Utopian.io is a groundbreaking project allowing open-source contributors to be rewarded in STEEM for their hard work. However, the core of the rewards (the 
Thanks to all of our sponsors,
Additionally, our vote worth at 100% voting power is much higher than $300! Due to this, we're able to reliably reward all of our contributors for their work.
However, though sponsorship is a very kind and charitable thing to do, we don't just treat it as a donation! We regularly pay out profits to our sponsors in the form of 20% of all author rewards on Utopian. But what exactly does this mean, and how much can you expect to make?
For this analysis, in order to use rounder/nicer numbers, we surveyed and gathered data on a hypothetical user's delegation to Utopian for the sole reason that his delegation amount is close to a round number. This user has currently delegated 1,006,118 SP to Utopian, which is just slightly more than 1 Million Steem Power, however we will be treating him as a completely random hypothetical user.
The user has also generously declined all sponsor rewards from Utopian, so in this post we're just using a hypothetical user who delegated similarly.
We're also using highly conservative numbers and rounding in order to make sure we can accurately say you can make at least the amount found in the analysis.
We also assume that STEEM is worth $1.00 for the purpose of this analysis, because STEEM has been somewhat volatile lately, slumping down to the sub-dollar ranges and periodically resurfacing above the dollar, while SBD has also been saying some erratic activity.
Lastly, and most importantly, we're gutting Pending Rewards from the algorithm right now. It's somewhat safe to say any sponsor has at least a week's worth of pending rewards that haven't paid out yet and aren't included in either of the parameters, but just to make sure we have the most conservative estimate possible, we are gutting those as well.
Your returns are affected by many factors and facets of the system, however. Here are some of the possible factors that could help or hurt returns:
@utopian-io@utopian-io
VESTSAccording to the Steem Blockchain (transaction link), our hypothetical user's delegation took place 19 days ago.
The act of delegation happened on November 7th, 2017, and the delegation amount was 2,065,354,335 VESTS translating to just over 1 Million Steem Power.
As you can see in the image to the right, our user's approximately-1-million SP delegation has so far given him $1225.16 in confirmed payouts.
However, the algorithm is deferred due to the fact that the Steem Blockchain only allows 8 beneficiaries per post. This means the hypothetical user, if he did not decline rewards will receive $1782.03 more.
However, there are also pending rewards that are not factored in due to the deferred nature of this algorithm.
It's very hard to query for those pending rewards, so instead we'll ignore pending rewards for now in order to give a conservative estimate. Currently, the numbers add up to over $3007 in recorded earnings.
In just 19 days of delegation, this hypothetical user could have earned over $3007 (if he did not decline rewards). Now, the calculation that remains is his yearly interest rate. Below are calculations in order to find the user's possible annual return-on-investment:
It's important to note that in the 5.8% estimate, pending rewards are not counted. Additionally, the price of Steem greatly affects your earnings. For example, if Steem goes up during your sponsorship, your earnings multiply to become even greater.
Steem gained over 500% in the past year, and many are hoping it could go up even more!
However, it's very hard to measure curation as a whole for the Steemit community. For one, curation rewards for a specific post is affected by so many different variables::
In order to estimate the user's possible curation rewards, I took the 100% power votes the user made with the same amount of Steem Power prior to his Utopian Delegation. He made an average of about 36 STEEM for his 100% upvote prior to the delegation.
Prior to the Utopian delegation, he had just over 3 million Steem Power (undelegated). His curation rewards Steem per undelegated SP ratio was 0.000010212 Curated STEEM per SP. Now, after losing 1 million SP to delegation, his expected curation reward for a 100% vote became 26.12 STEEM, about a 10 STEEM decrease.
Did his 3000 STEEM in rewards make up for the 10 STEEM loss in curation per full upvote? Let's see: doing the math, we find that it would take 300 full votes for the user to lose more in lost curation compared to his Utopian rewards. Given he delegated for 19 days, that's about 16 votes/day.
However, it's unlikely any user who has enough SP to delegate expends 16 completely full-powered votes in a day. In fact, even if you spread out your votes, you cannot vote more than 11 times every day while keeping voting power at 100%. In this case, the user would have gained more from Utopian rewards than lost curation.
If you currently vote fully 16 times a day (that's 1600% in votes), then it's possible that Utopian may reward you less than Steem's built-in curation rewards.
According to ValuePenguin Research, bank savings account interest rates are almost all less than 1.05%, with the most common occurrence (mode) being 0.01% APY.
According to CNN Money the average United States savings account interest rate is about 0.06%, even though "many of the nation's biggest banks pay rates as low as 0.01%."
Given the average rate, powering up Steem and delegating to Utopian is almost 100 times better than saving it in a bank, and this is not even counting pending rewards and fluctuations in Steem Price. Additionally, Utopian is projected to grow much more in the future with new features coming out all the time and many new users eager to join.
Furthermore, if your bank like some of the nation's largest banks pays a measly 0.01% rate, doing so would be almost 600 times better.
Taking this hypothetical user's delegation specifically into account and ignoring other possible benefits such as the price of Steem or pending rewards, your annual interest rate will likely be at least 5.8%. (and even more if Utopian grows!)
According to Steem Reports, Utopian is the largest delegation receiver on the Steem Blockchain, and this is only probably going to grow even more.
Compared to opening a savings account with your bank, this could be between six and six hundred times better. Due to these statistics, we highly recommend opening a delegation with Utopian now at this page!
Thanks for reading,
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image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
note: This post did not mean to call out any specific user, and relies on a random user selected for the purpose of the analysis. The user we are using has also incredibly generously declined all rewards from Utopian, so these measures are also hypothetical.