Now That We're in #NewSteem, Let's Review Our Delegations!
Delegating to a bunch of projects, purely to receive upvotes from them is something of the past in my opinion. I just went through all my existing delegations via the handy tool on Steemworld and purged a bunch of them. It just didn't feel right anymore to delegate a hefty amount of SP for supposed monetary gain, instead of using it for manual curation.
I said 'supposed monetary gain', because due to the 50/50 reward/curation split, I don't think there was much to be gained anyway by delegating. In my featured image you can see the delegations I have left untouched, most of them are small delegations to new users that I've onboarded via Steem.Ninja and I've also left my delegation to @chops.support. The SBI delegation was done via Dlease, so I can't just cancel that one.
Delegations I've Removed
MSP - This was just a 100 SP delegation I added a couple of months ago, for which I got a small upvote in return. I still quite like the Minnow Support & PALnet projects, but I think that small amount of SP will be put to better use by myself. I doubt they will miss it ;-)
Partiko - I had delegated 250 SP to Partiko, back when they were looking for delegations. This gave me a $0.10 upvote daily, regardless of the content of my posts. I really don't have a need for that anymore and it kinda goes against the #NewSteem values. Don't get me wrong, Partiko is a great app and they deserve all the funding they get, but I think there are better ways than these mass-delegation investments.
Qurator - My largest delegation, 500 SP. They gave me a $0.1 upvote daily and some Q tokens on the Steem-Engine. Again, I have no need for it and I'm not a big fan of these curation communities anymore. I'd really like to focus more on manual curation myself and getting these daily upvotes in return for a delegation just seems a bit outdated now.
Steem Basic Income - Removed my 300 SP delegation. For this, I got some SBI shares in return. I'm still going to invest in SBI shares, but only by sending them Steem and sponsoring other Steemians as well. SBI is still my main source of upvotes, I've debated wither I should just exit SBI, but I've opted against it. I'm a big fan of Basic Income projects in general, though it is still technically also an auto vote. Kinda on the fence about this one, but I'll keep it.
SteemUA - Delegated 250 SP to them, but I don't think the project is that active anymore. Okay, you get a UA score, but what does it actually do? Isn't it just a scheme to get daily upvotes form them in general? What does the owner do with all the delegated SP? I've definitely seen him use it for personal gain as well, which would be fine if there was actually something being developed. Now it just seemed like a quick money grab. Could be wrong though...
Decide for Yourself!
Look, I'm not saying that everyone should follow my example. You should do what you're most comfortable with, but do stop to think whether you might want to change things up. Chances are that your existing delegations simply aren't profitable anymore in the first place & maybe you'd actually like some more Steem Power to curate with.
Most people have probably already removed their delegations to bid bots, so it not really that far-fetched to also start looking at removing other delegations as well. Now that projects have the option to publicly apply for delegations via the SPS, maybe you should support them via that first instead of immediately delegating SP yourself. That way, they have to undergo some form of scrutiny before getting funded.
Future Plans
I'm going to keep increasing my Steem Power in order to curate even more content. Currently there are some really good APR rates on Dlease that allow you to lease SP pretty cheaply. With the increased curation rewards, that could allow you to break even in the end or maybe even make a small profit.
I'll definitely delegate my SP to projects that are near and dear to me, but my delegations-for-profit days are over. I'll just try to make it work with the regular curation mechanisms, just as the system was intended to work! If bid-bots like SmartSteem can make the switch, so can we!
I just did the same thing myself! I had almost all of my SP delegated out and now I'm taking it back to do my own curation. I hope we can all work together to get Steem back on the right track.
Glad I'm not the only one! My buddy @bozz also removed a couple of his delegations, so this isn't as rare as I thought luckily :)
Great Idea ! I am just doing the same thing and found out I was delegating to 7-8 small acounts (that have been flagged to close to 0 rep) ! It all happened on August 3rd ! And I definitely did not make them. How could I see when it was made?
I guess my keys are compromised... That sucks... Because I don't know which dapps might have use it...
Wow that really sucks, yeah it seems that you gave some dapp access to your active key perhaps?
Check SteemConnect and remove access for everything?
Maybe ask for advice on the Steem or Steemit telegram channels, they're really active.
You can still receive upvotes without delegating your SP.
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Thanks for retaining the chops delegation but there's no need. I never asked for any delegations from anyone... it was never intended to be any kind of vote weight / buying scheme.
There's still several bots not joining in with the curation yet. I see all of them doing it soon, that or they are going to fail.
The problem is, we then look like we're buying votes, but are not. It will take some time for all these changes to settle.
Oh that one will remain right where it is :P It's a good project and I never did it to receive anything in return.
Yeah I really hope every bot will eventually switch to manual curation, I'd personally never use them anymore anyway.
Let's hope they spread the votes a little, and not just to the accounts at 4 mins that are perceived to gain big rewards.
There's many smaller accounts who could get these bigger votes... and then maybe they will invest.. token goes up.
I also did remove a lot of delegations. Mostly to projects, not so much to bidbots.
Only Tipu and OCDB were bidbots which did get my delegation, but both have been set to zero.
I will keep the UA delegation. It gives only a miserable upvote, but the more upvotes I get the more rewards for the curators.
I am doubting what I should do with the delegation to steem.ninja. Not concluded yet!
The basic income programs are still great and still do what they promise. They do add value to your post, which is good. But they also a raking in lots of curation rewards. Curious how they will use those!
Cheers,
Peter
A lot of those only work if you are actively posting anyway. I know that a lot of people have started to pull back from making posts and focus more on manual curation, so it only makes sense that you would adjust your delegations accordingly. I need to dig into mine a little more. I am nowhere near finished fine tuning them!
!BEER
View or trade
BEERat steem-engine.Hey @daan, here is a bit
BEERfor you. Enjoy it!I also have 2 delegations left. SBI and UA.
I only keep UA for the upvote. But I do not know what the hell they are doing with all those delegations.
SBI was the first delegation I ever made and by far the best. I think it is the best project on Steem. Useful for both whales and minnows.
I'm also looking at my delegations and plan to remove the one to Steem-UA.
I've not posted for a week. The first time ever since I joined almost 2 years ago and I need to make my SP work better.
I will probably increase my delegation to qurator since I like earning the tokens and the Steem. Upvotes are not relevant now as I'm not posting.
I need to look more closely at actifit but will probably leave it as is since I post with an alt account daily with my steps.
Not sure about Steem Monsters and a couple of others but they are small amounts.
Glad to hear that other people are looking at their delegations too. 😁
I also recently reviewed and dropped a lot of my delegations, I think its the way to go these days
I get your reasoning Daan, and I did a delegation purge myself recently.
At the end of the day what is the point in tying up SP that can be put to use curating. There was a time when someone like me who was writing mainly long form travel and creative writing felt massively undervalued... and this led to a feeling of being forced into using curation services. It was like scrabbling for pennies by delegating out to a load of different projects who'd give you upvotes. But nothing was qualitative. It didn't matter about time, effort or mainstream appeal of what you were writing. Oldsteem was literally about either matching SP (circle jerks) or buying the value to your post. Even being aware of all this I never used any vote buying apart from OCDB for about 2 months before newsteem.
All of this seems to have changed with a lot of big stake removing their BidBot delegation and looking for quality content to support and I've noticed some of the bidbots have straight up started curating. I seem to be getting a regular vote from appreciator and I'm certainly not paying for it.
All in all EIP and the HardForks seem to have succeeded in what they set out to do. It is a great result imo.
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