Published via Ecency

Hello, lovely Hive community! It's Willy, a proud Ecencial, here to share something awesome. There are numerous reasons why I fall in love with Ecency each day, from its impressive features, which I've often discussed, to the welcoming community, particularly on their microblogging platform, Waves. Today, let's delve into a fantastic investment strategy through delegation that Ecency offers to Hivians. I'll elaborate more on the benefits, given my current involvement and the advantages I've experienced.

Image was sourced from the ecency discord server assets and credit goes to @germanandradeg

Before I get into the details, let me explain this for the sake of some friends on the Ecency Waves platform: Hive Power (HP) is what gives you influence on the Hive Blockchain in terms of giving upvotes. From what I've learned as a newcomer on the HHH (Hive Humpday Hangout) show hosted by @ph1102 on the Ecency Discord server every Wednesday at 5 pm UTC, there's a daily reward pool on Hive meant to be distributed by upvoting content. The more HP (staked Hive) you have, the more you can share this reward by upvoting others. The Hive system is set up so that every time you upvote someone, you get a 50/50 share of the amount you used to upvote. If you've noticed, you've been claiming "curation" rewards, that's your 50% for an upvote you gave to someone seven days ago. This also means that if you don't upvote people, you're potentially missing out on income.

Well, Obviously! there's a limit to how much you can upvote based on your Resource Credit (a bar that decreases with each upvote and refills from 0-100% in 5 days). It's recommended and more profitable to ensure this bar stays above 80%, and I'll go into detail about that in another post. After a year of upvoting, following the set percentage rates, you would have earned approximately 9% of the value of your Hive Power (HP). Also, if you don't power down, there's a compounding effect. Additionally, you passively earn about 2.95% Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on your staked Hive (Hive Power). I'll attach a screenshot of a comment from @ph1102 on one of my posts that explains this technically.

So, what does it entail to delegate your Hive Power (HP)?

The term "delegate" implies entrusting responsibilities to another. In essence, when you delegate your HP, you're granting all privileges, upvoting responsibilities, and associated benefits to the recipient. They'll upvote and receive the curation reward on your behalf. Well, this doesn't mean you can't reclaim it at your discretion. You have the freedom to undelegate from a person or a project at any time, and no one can question your decision. However, the process takes 5 days for you to regain control.

So, what's the benefit of delegating for me?

Well, if you delegate to just anybody, you essentially get nothing in return. However, various projects on Hive offer returns for delegations. Imagine it like depositing money in a bank as a fixed deposit, where the bank promises a certain percentage rate for keeping your money with them for a specific period. Similarly, there are ways to earn passive income by delegating to Hive projects. Many of them offer an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of over 20%, which can be more than what you might gain from actively upvoting on your own. But there's a catch you should be aware of:

Most projects provide returns in their own tokens, so if the token value drops, your returns decrease as well, and vice versa.
If you delegate all your Hive Power, you lose the ability to upvote others. As I mentioned in a previous post, upvoting others is a key way to build relationships and a follower base on Hive.

So Willy, what sets Delegating to Ecency Apart?:

To start, Ecency stands out by rewarding its delegators with 100% of the curation (upvote) reward they earned that day while curating quality content. Yes, you read that correctly, a full 100%. This means that whatever is earned by @ecency from upvoting goes back to the delegators. The cool part? It pays in Hive, not any other token. This adds a layer of security to your earnings, as there's more trust and confidence in the potential of Hive compared to other second-layer tokens under the Hive umbrella. Currently, with my modest delegations of 1200 HP, I passively earn an average of around 0.27 Hives each day, precisely at 12 am. Well, my math might not be spot-on, but you can see the details in the image below.

Okay, let's do a bit of math, but don't worry, it won't involve finding "x." Instead, we'll look at the potential profit difference between getting curation rewards by personally upvoting and receiving passive Hive from @ecency by delegating. Using my 1200 HP for this calculation: I can effectively curate at about 0.018 USD. Considering I earn 50% when I upvote, this means I get about 0.009 USD for each upvote. Now, every time you upvote, the value of your next upvote decreases, but for simplicity, let's assume I can curate at the same rate 10 times a day to keep my upvote resource credit at 80%. That would result in 0.009 x 10 = 0.09 USD. Half of that would be in HBD, and the other half in HP. But keep in mind that the value drops each time you upvote.

Now, let's assess the value that Ecency provides me. I estimate it to be around 0.25 Hive. When converted to USD using the Coinbase converter, it equals 0.09 USD. This value is comparable to actively curating content each day. However, here comes the significant difference:

I receive the passive income in liquid Hive every day, allowing me to transact with it on the same day or power it up, which is my usual choice. In contrast, with personal curation, you have to wait for 7 days to claim, and it's automatically set to power up and HBD. This implies it will take quite a while to access it in case you need it.
I don't have to worry about missing out on a day in case I fall sick, have a busy schedule, or simply am not in the mood to read content. I don't know about you, but I certainly have quite a few of those days 🤦.

Feeling excited? Well, that's not all—brace yourself for the bomb!

Ecency Points:

Now, may God forbid a million times that I don't talk about this. Adding to all the benefits I've mentioned, here's the icing on the cake: not only do you receive passive Hive equal to what you'd get with personal curation, but you also earn Ecency points passively, around the same time you receive your Hive each day. This aspect is what captivated me about delegating to @ecency. You receive 10% of your Hive Power delegation to @ecency in Ecency points. So, with my modest 1200 HP, I earn 120 Ecency points every day. For those familiar with what you can do with Ecency points, I'm sure you're excited by now. But for those who may not know, Ecency points are currently Ecency's native token for now, but they can only be used to boost or promote content. You can use them to boost your own content, provided it's of quality, or boost a friend's or any other content you find interesting and deserving of an upvote.

The minimum boosting starts at 150 Ecency points for a 1-dollar curation. Now, think about my 120 Ecency points each day—simply by engaging with the Ecency app or playing the spinner game, I can easily top it up to 150 and even more, having a 1-dollar curation or boost on my quality post. Let's get back to the math: that's 50% for me, which equals 0.5 USD. Adding that to my 0.09 USD, I passively earn 0.59 USD every day. Now, 1200 HP is equal to 438 USD according to the Coinbase converter. 0.59 USD multiplied by 365 days in a year equals 215 USD in value. 438 divided by 2 equals 219. Considering that I'll be posting with the Ecency app, which would give me 15 Ecency points for a post, that means I would make approximately 50% of my delegation to Ecency.

The exciting part? All of these earnings are in Hive and HBD, and considering the fact that Hive will likely increase in value, bam! I'm on my way to becoming a millionaire 😂.

You can still upvote others

This is another compelling reason why I delegated a substantial amount of my HP to @ecency. You see, my modest HP wouldn't be sufficient to show deep appreciation for someone else's effort and work. However, here's the beauty of this arrangement: I can still use my Ecency points to upvote other works I find interesting. This time, I can give them more substantial upvotes than my HP could ever achieve. Today, I wanted to support my friend, @swiftstar; he made a post, and I wanted to upvote it. I used 150 Ecency points to boost him, and Ecency did that on my behalf. Guess what? Ecency would let him know it was from me. It would take months, perhaps even a couple of years, for me to accumulate enough HP to give a one-dollar upvote. You can see why I find this awesome. Just imagine, with 15,000 HP delegated to @ecency, I could boost 10 people each day with a 1-dollar upvote without breaking a sweat. That's actually my goal for next year.

So, in a nut shell, from my perspective, I believe it's more profitable and safer to delegate to @ecency. I still believe there are awesome projects out there which am currently studying into, but with my Hive journey, I know Ecency would always be on top of my list. Now dear reader, this is not a call for you to go give out your entire HP, infact, my mentor @melinda010100 advice not to, because it is better in the long run that you always get active curating others. So always leave some HP to curate others.
Again, the calculation I did here was from my rookie point of view, and maybe a more experienced person may see some loop holes in my math. I'd be super happy to see them show me the other side and twist to my Math in the comment section. My intention for this article is to show and help out newbies to understand Hive better, so the views of experienced Hivians are super welcome in the comment section.

I know it's been a lengthy article, so I want to thank you for reaching the end of it. I hope you found it interesting and informative.

Before You Leave:

I shared an overview of the Ecency Proposal two days ago. Today, we received a message on the Discord page from @good-karma that the proposal will commence in a couple of days. So, I kindly ask for a favor – please read the proposal and consider voting for it. Voting for @ecency is voting for a better future for Hive.

My overview: @willythewhale/an-overview-of-the-ecency

The Ecency Proposal:
https://ecency.com/proposals/283

How to Vote:

Image sourced

Hive Humpday Hangout:

As mentioned in my introduction, the HHH is a show organized by @ph1102 on the Ecency Discord server. Experienced Hivians from across the blockchain gather to discuss and teach on topics that will enlighten both newbies and seasoned Hivians. I owe much of the knowledge I've gained to this show. I encourage you to join in tomorrow and every Wednesday at 5 pm UTC. Trust me, you'll have a blast.