Hello Steemians,
One of the interesting things about Steem is the flexibility of the blockchain and your options for getting stuff done. One of the issues with new people trying out the platform is buying Steem , powering it up and generating resource credits so you can perform transactions like posting articles, uploading pictures, writing comments and upvoting articles. Delegation of Steem power is a great solution to this singular, but multi-faceted problem.
When a new account holder signs up in Travel.io they are delegated about 15 SteemPower, which more then enough to start posting pictures and articles. Similarly for games, the new player can be delegated a small amount of SteemPower allowing them to play. Similarly, new cryptocurrency traders need done SteemPower to trade. the game Today I would like to talk briefly about delegation. While the most commonly known and understood way to make Steem is through content creation (author rewards) or content consumption and upvoting (curation rewards), there is a third way of earning Steem called Delegation. When you earn Steem through delegation, you don’t create content and you don’t upvote content. You invest money in Steem, you Power-up your Steem to Steem Power and then you loan Steem Power to other people or businesses on the Steem blockchain, through a loan process called delegation. The people or businesses you delegate your Steem to, make money and give you a percentage. That’s delegation in brief and I will describe it in more detail below.
Delegation explained
To understand delegation you need to understand that unlike many other cryptocurrency blockchains which have one coin, the Steem blockchain has three called Steem, Steem Power and SBD. Influence on the Steemit platform depends on how much Steem you have “Powered Up” or converted to Steem Power. Steem Power determines how much your vote is worth on the platform. Because it’s our Steem Power and not our Steem which determines the value of our vote, we delegate or loan our Steem Power to new accounts, businesses or projects through a special loan process called delegation.
The Safety of Delegation
I have loaned people money before and it is always risky because once you give someone your money. There is a risk of them not returning your money or the business fails and you lose all your money. The wonderful thing about delegation is that you when you delegate Steem Power you still control it. So you can take it back anytime you want by Un-Delegating it. You don’t have to ask permission to take it back and you don’t have to wait for someone to give it back to you. You just Un-delegate it.
Examples of Delegation
You can delegate your Steem Power to a new account, a project or a business on the Steem blockchain. You can delegate for free to help new people get started or you can earn passive income when delegating to a business or curator.
Delegation is a Passive Investment
The other great thing about delegation is that it is passive. You delegate to a project and then you earn Steem if the project earns Steem. Now you don’t have to do anything else.
How to Delegate
The simplest way I know to delegate is by using Steemworld. I type www.steemworld.org/@shortsegments into my browser and then hit return. Then once my personal page loads I go to the section called delegation and choose who I want to delegate to and how much. Then a box opens and I have a choice of using Steemworld or Steemconnect to delegate my Steempower. I advise everyone to use Steemconnect for all transactions involving moving money out of your wallet with your active keys for safety reasons. You have probably figured out that most people and applications use Steemconnect for moving Steem out of their wallet to prevent theft of their private keys and loss of their Steem. There are several reasons, but one is Steemconnect doesn’t save copies of your keys on their server, so once your transaction is done your keys disappear.
Un-Delegating
When you want to take your Steem Power back you use the same delegation section and replace the amount of Steem Power you delegated with the number zero and you get all your Steem Power back. So if I delegated 100 Steem Power and I wanted to get it back, I would go in and delegate to the same person again, but this time instead of delegating them 100 I would delegate them “0” or zero Steem Power and get all my Steem Power back.
Delegation things you should also know.
You can only delegate Steem Power you own. So you can’t delegate Steem Power you leased or Steem Power someone delegated to you. Once you undelegate Steem Power the project or business you delegated it to loses that Steem Power immediately and can no longer use it. However you won’t be able to use it for 4 days. This is a safety feature to protect the blockchain from people who would abuse this delegation system.
Now while this is a short and simplified version of the process, I feel it hits the important points you need to understand about delegation.
Posted via Steemleo