If you're new to Hive, you may not know about one of the best ways to earn curation rewards passively.
This is called Curation Trails, a project on Hive.Vote (@steemauto) created by @mahdiyari.
What Are Curation Trails?
Curation Trails are a way to piggyback on the votes cast by other big curators in the Hive ecosystem.
Instead of doing the curation manually, which you'll still be able to do anyway, you can delegate some authority and let Hive.Vote find quality content to vote for you.
It's important to note that Curation Trails are not a delegation system.
It's All in the Hive Power You Have
There are 2 things to remember here:
- You need a good amount of Hive Power (HP)
- Curation Trails will affect your Voting Mana (remember, on Hive, every 100% vote you cast will use 2%)
On the Hive blockchain, in general, the amount of HP determines the value of your Vote Value (next screenshot).
For example, I have a very low Vote Value and, therefore, I am making almost nothing with Curation Trails. So having a high HP, and therefore a high Vote Value, is the rule of the game here.
With low HP, Hive.Vote (see further down for the tutorial on this) will not cast low value votes.
The Plethora of Curators Out There
The best part about this is that you can find a great number of curators that focus on different topics and earn you different rewards.
For example:
@monster-curator - This team curates and upvotes great @splinterlands gaming content that uses the #SPT tag. Following this curation trail will add to your SPT earnings.
Note: If you want to go the extra mile, you can also delegate your SPT to @monster-curator. Remember, Delegation is different from Curation Trails. See this post of mine about delegating to @monster-curator.
@spt-curate - This is another great curator of @splinterlands content about games, which of course will help you earn some SPT tokens passively.
@leo.voter - The team here curates @leofinance content posted on LeoFinance.io. In this case, following this curation trail will gain you some nice LEO tokens.
@ecency - This curation trail will help you earn Ecency Points, which can be used for in-app services, like Promote, Boost, Gifting. Ecency Points can be redeemed for promotions or boosts to your posts in the form of high value upvotes (for example, this very same post was boosted with some Ecency Points).
@risingstargame - If you happen to play the Rising Star game, then you should definitely follow this curation trail. The account focuses on upvoting posts about Rising Star, of course, but also other high-quality content about music.
@hive.pizza: This is another one I'd like to get into (oh 🤦♂️ so much to do, so little time!). The team here curates content relating to pizza, gaming, movie, art, and music.
And there are many, many more to choose from. Those ☝ are just some examples I'm looking into at the moment.
How to Start With Curation Trails
This is how you start with Curation Trails.
Sign Up With ++Only++ Your Posting Key
Head over to Hive.Vote (image below) and sign up though Hivesigner.
If you're doing this for the first time, only use your Posting Key with Hive.Vote. The Posting Key can only: Post, Comment, Vote, Reblog, Follow, Profile.
As a reminder, in the Hive blockchain, you have 4 Private Keys:
- Owner: Change Password, Change Keys, Recover Account
- Active: Transfer Funds, Power up/down, Voting Witnesses/Proposals
- Posting: Post, Comment, Vote, Reblog, Follow, Profile
- Memo: Send/View encrypted messages on transfers
And Hive.Vote only needs the Posting Key (the third one from the list above). You only have to use your Posting Key and your Hivesigner password once.
Hive.Vote uses Hivesigner to broadcast the transaction(s) which will allow them to use your account posting authority. Only posting!
Start a Curation Trail
When you're in, you'll have to first authorize @steemauto (which is Hive.Vote). Can you see the "1" in the image below? I've already granted permission to @steemauto, that's why it says Unauthorize (Leave HiveVote). In your case, you'll have to authorize.
After you authorize @steemauto, you want to click on the Curation Trail blue button (number "2" in the image above).
Scroll down and search for a trail, which means you need to search for a username.
Let's try with @monster-curator for example. Insert the username, without the "@" symbol and click search.
You'll get a result just like this. Then, click on Follow.
Now, go back to the CURATION TRAIL by clicking on the left side on the screen (next image).
You'll see something like this.
Click on the gear icon ⚙ to adjust the settings to see something like this 👇
I highly, highly recommend you read the FAQ section. However, I can give you a couple of pointers here.
Following a curation trail will, inevitably, eat up your voting power. Remember the screenshot earlier?
Therefore, remember to adjust the Voting weight (%) from the settings. Default is 50%, and you'll need to find the right balance with a bit of trial and error.
Regarding the Scale and Fixed options for the Voting weight (%):
- Fixed voting weight (default) means you will upvote with the exact percentage you entered.
- Scaled voting weight means your voting weight will be changed (scaled) by the trail's voting weight. For example, if you followed a trail with this option set to 10% then if that trail upvotes a post by 50%, your upvote weight will be 5% (10% of 50%).
Extra tip for beginners:
If you have very low HP (like me at around 30), I recommend you set Voting weight (%) at 100 and use the Fixed voting weight. Else, you won't cast any vote at all, because Hive.Vote won't cast low-value votes.
How to Start Using Fanbase
This is another interesting tool by Hive.Vote.
By using the Fanbase tool, you can automatically upvote your favorite authors (like your friends) immediately after they publish a post.
This is very similar to Curation Trails.
You look up for a user, you follow the user and then configure the Upvote weight in the same fashion that we've explored earlier.
I haven't tried this yet, but it seems promising.
How to See if Votes Are Being Cast
Now that you're following Curation Trails, how can you see if this is working? Hive.Vote doesn't have a section where you can see the votes that are cast.
However, there are 2 ways for you to see if/when votes are being cast:
First, keep an eye on your hiveblocks.com transactions. Go to https://hiveblocks.com/@davdiprossimo (use your username), then CTRL+F (Command+F on Mac) and search for the upvotes.
For example, in that screenshot 👇 you can see that I am searching for the words "davdiprossimo upvote". As you can see, that is an example of an article the system upvoted via Curation Trails for me.
Second, after a few days, you'll start receiving your rewards, and you'll able to see those transactions in your History (example below borrowed from this article by @shauner)
Keep an Eye on Your Voting Power
I said this earlier: Curation Trails will impact your Voting Mana.
Of course, after a few days you use the system, you'll want to adjust your voting percentage up or down on Hive.Vote itself.
Go to Home in Hive.Vote, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Here, you want to adjust the Upvote Mana threshold (see next image).
Look at mine, it's set at 70%.
If my Voting Mana falls below 70%, the account will not cast any upvotes through my Curation Trails until it increases above the threshold.
Again, this is based on personal preferences. It'll take some time to figure out the perfect percentage for you, but it's worth the time.
More Readings on Curation Trails
Special thanks to the following posts for giving me some inspiration on creating this guide.
- Making More HIVE, SPT, LEO, and SPORTS with Curation Trails! - by @shauner
- Curation Trail: Climb Aboard! - by @rosiew
And that's it! If you're looking to earn curation rewards passively, that's the way to go.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Ciao 👋😁
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very good information on curation trails ! Easy to understand for someone not familiar with hive.vote (great tool !).
You could also add the @hodlcommunity curation trail followed by 50+ users and curation Leofinance content (therefore if you have HP or LeoPower this is a great fit).
Cheers mate,
@vlemon
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
That's great to hear mate. I did not know you had a Curation Trail. Good to know.
I'll definitely follow you in the future when I have enough HP.
Thx
Yes, no worries; you cannot know it all :D. It was if someone went to the comments and as many people follow us on Leofinance, I thought of dropping a comment.
Thank you
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Something I don't understand about Hive power and vote value, is there a payout table somewhere?
Awesome post! Thanks for the mention and further expanding on my post about curation trails. This is a great way for folks to increase their passive earnings on HIVE! !PIZZA
Thanks to you! Your post helped a lot 🙂
Yes, I love the idea. Cannot wait to see more results as I increase my HP. Great passive income strategy.
I'm working on a new post showing the increase in my curation APR since focusing my attention on curation. I'm currently trying to hit 10%, but can't seem to get it above 9.5%, although that's just for HIVE. If you add in SPT and other tribe tokens the combined APR is certainly in the double digits by following these curation trails. !PIZZA
That's super interesting and exciting. Looking forward to reading your post.
Trails are super because with all these tribes how can one keep up. Really great service. I'm actually re-thinking all my future investment in Hive and the others simply because I want more HP to take advantage of trails.
When it comes to the tribe token curation, make sure you are staking those coins to increase your curation rewards there. For example, your HP won't impact the amount of SPT you earn but the amount of SPT you have staked will increase those SPT curation rewards. Same goes for OneUp, Leo, and others. I probably put too much focus on powering up my HIVE the past few months whereas in hindisght, I probably should have put those investments toward staking SPT, OneUp, and Leo.
This is gold man thanks so much. One last question if I may:
What if those tokens are Delegated? For instance: I have 30K+ SPT delegated to monster-curator, which of course I had to stake first, but does that count in regards to what you just said? Thx
When you delegate your tokens to monster-curator, for example, they share the curation rewards they receive with all the people who delegate tokens to them. But, those tokens are no longer part of your own SPT Power so it does not increase your own SPT voting power when you follow a curation trail or manually vote posts.
Delegating to monster-curator (or any other tribe token curation service) means you don't have to worry about setting up your own voting and you just receive a cut of what they earn. But, you don't spend any voting power to get those rewards either. It's like investing in an index fund in the stock market... you just sit back and collect your dividends.
In your case, since all of your SPT is delegated to monster-curator, you do not earn any SPT rewards when you manually vote an SPT post or follow an SPT curation trail, but you get those automatic "dividends" from monster-curator instead.
What I would suggest you try is to stake some of your SPT earnings on your own account (not delegating them) and then you can see how much you earn in SPT from your own curation vs. the share of curation rewards you get by delegating to monster-curator.
I delegated 10000 SPT to @monster-curator and the APR is ~ 35%.
I'm collecting the earning in 1 month and see if this APR is stable or not.
I think 35% is a quite high APR and I'm happy with it.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Yay! 🤗
Your content has been boosted with Ecency Points, by @davdiprossimo.
Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform!
Support Ecency
Vote for Proposal
Delegate HP and earn more
Loads of information at one post. Thank you for explaining. I was confused before...
It's great to hear this is useful 🙂
I know ... perhaps a bit too lengthy but I thought I might as well explain everything properly while I was at it.
@davdiprossimo! The Hive.Pizza team manually curated this post.
PIZZA Holders sent $PIZZA tips in this post's comments:
@gillianpearce(3/10) tipped @davdiprossimo (x1)
shauner tipped davdiprossimo (x2)
Learn more at https://hive.pizza.
!PIZZA
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks so much for the pizza 🍕😁
You're welcome. It is a very good post for newcomers. 😊
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks for putting me through with your information. I can now do something on the site without asking any assistance from anyone.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
You're welcome man! 🙂👊
This makes me happy because I had the same problem at the start and I put this guide together for the same reason.
Thank you
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Congratulations @davdiprossimo! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 1500 upvotes.
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STOPYipppeee!! GREAT Post! Thanks for the tag for it! You were very thorough!! GREAT JOB!! :) You've been manually upvoted by rosiew from 1UP!
Thanks so much Rosie! Your post helped a lot in preparation of mine. 🙂👊
Thanks for your sharing!
Very informative post, I think I will try it.
Now I understand why I got a lot of UV with same % if 1 main account upvoted my post :)
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
It's great to hear the post was useful. Yeah, there are so many little things to consider...happy to hear now you got the hang of it. 👍
Never heard of this tool (but that's not surprising as whole HIVE ecosystem is kind of new to me), thanks for sharing.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Oh yes, that is a powerful tool indeed. No need to rush into it, but definitely something you want to have on your to-do list for the future! 🙂
Very helpful post. I'm introducing some individuals to HIVE and i think curation trails can definitely help get them going.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very Interesting and informative post, thanks for sharing 👍🏼.
Very nice post. This has given well detailed explanation.
On an alt account that I use to curate a specific tribe, I have around 10 Hive Power. I have set up to Voting Weight=100% and Fixed voting weight as it wouldn't vote the trail. Let's see if this will do the trick, thanks for all the details provided!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
You're most welcome! 🙂
I'm doing this at the moment and seems to be working fine. Hopefully it'll work well for you too.
Thanks for stopping by...
Will this affect my Resource Credits or only my Voting Mana? TIA
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Awesome explanation of how this all works. Have been playing steemmonsters for 3 years and had no idea how this all works.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta