Up or Down?

“Powering up” is the action of moving Steem to Steem Power (SP) within your wallet. There are a number of scenarios where this powering up process can take place. Some users prefer to purchase liquid Steem through a cryptocurrency exchange like Bittrex or Poloniex and then “Power Up” once they arrive at Steemit.com. Users can also convert their hard earned Steem Dollars (SBD) into Steem through the internal marketplace to then transfer into the SP slot. This process of placing Steem into Steem Power is the ‘staking’ part of Steem’s Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) blockchain protocol. The Steem blockchain is designed to reward users who hold their Steem as Steem Power.

Whichever method you choose, ultimately accumulating Steem Power comes with a range of big benefits. Today, we’ll go through each aspect of powering up and what you can expect in the short and long-term.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Here are the key benefits of staking your Steem as Steem Power from the more evident to the not so obvious -

Your votes become stronger. Your upvote (and downvote) is directly proportional to the amount of Steem Power you have. The more SP, the stronger and more profitable your vote becomes.

It’s difficult to see the progressive growth of an upvote when you start out as a new Steemian, but that can change quickly as you begin earning through blogging and commenting. We recommend using tools such as steemnow.com to keep track of your vote weight and percentages as they mature over time.

You earn more curation rewards. You can earn Steem Power just by upvoting good content. Curators actually receive a portion of blog post rewards when a post pays out after 7 days. Blogging isn’t the only way to earn cryptocurrency on Steemit, curation is powerful too!

You earn interest on your Steem holdings. Just like with other Proof of Stake elements in cryptocurrencies such as NEO and PIVX, you earn a compounding interest rate on all Steem held as Steem Power. Holding SP essentially gains you passive income that you wouldn’t otherwise receive if you left your Steem liquid on an exchange or external wallet.

You can help create new accounts more efficiently. Every new account made on the Steem blockchain requires a bit of fuel to get going, either by purchasing new accounts with crypto or delegating new account a small amount of SP until they’ve powered up the requisite Steem. Delegating is an efficient and low-cost method for creating accounts and we use @jesta’s application Vessel to do so immediately with our amount of Steem Power.

You can delegate your Steem Power. Delegating SP is an incredibly powerful tool unique to the Steem blockchain. Delegation allows other users to ‘borrow’ any amount of your Steep Power. This is really useful for when you’re creating new accounts, starting a Steem-powered project, or just want to support Steemit initiatives you believe in by lending a portion of your own stake.

You become a trusted Steward of Steemit. This is one of the less explained and less apparent social benefits of powering up Steem in your account. The power and value of Steem goes up as more individuals stake their holdings and as such, there is a lot of street cred / kudos / community appreciation given to people who are committed holders of the coin. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t power down or transfer our liquid currency when you need to, but staking a noticeable portion of your crypto as SP is a well-respected step on the Steemit platform.

These are the top reasons why we recommend powering-up Steem when you can. Accumulating Steem Power will open up a number of financial and social opportunities that can start to unfold the myriad of possibilities with Steemit and its supporting blockchain.