The dangers of powering down
Yesterday I reached the end of my first 3 month power down, and upon trying to transfer my STEEM to another wallet, found that I couldn't because my "bandwidth" had been exceeded - in short (as gleaned from a few disparate posts) because I didn't have any Steem Power left, and that was what influenced my allowed number of transactions.
Not only this, but I couldn't cancel any ongoing power down, upvote (I didn't try this personally but another post querying the same problem stated this, and it makes sense), pretty much anything.
The only solution for me in the short term was to buy more Steem Power in order to be able to access my funds, which was a bit of a bummer. Whilst I understand Steem Power is a way of encouraging people to keep some investment in the currency, and think that's a great idea, as a semi-casual user of the currency it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If I'd have a) been aware of this mechanism or b) been able to set a minimum retention, I wouldn't have felt the same feeling I'm sure they get when they send a "small payment" to a "Nigerian prince" in order to "access their funds".
Of course, it all went just fine in the end, but I thought the community might benefit from my experience! I didn't have 0 Steem Power, but near enough, and depositing about 8 was enough to allow me to carry on using Steemit again :)
Thanks for sharing that...been wondering myself.
No problem :)
The process of transferring back in is pretty painless (even if it is a little annoying), mostly I'm just surprised it's not better communicated as it's something that anyone who leaves a power down running is likely to run in to!
this is an important post.
however, i am a bit confused with your post.
first off, what do you mean that you exceeded your bandwidth?
second, what were you not able to do with after fully powering down?
sorry for the questions.
No problems :)
So when I would try to transfer my STEEM out, I'd get a message saying something along the lines of "You have exceeded your maximum bandwidth", which I can only assume means that user actions are rate limited based on Steem Power, and that I didn't have enough Steem Power to do... well... anything. Perhaps if I'd waited long enough I would have been able to do things again?
After fully powering down, I was not able to transfer my steem, power up (I forgot to mention this in my main post, so I'm glad you asked) cancel any ongoing power-downs (although this gave a different message, something along the lines of being unable to transmit the message) and those are all of the things I tried.
I read a couple of posts from other people after searching a bit where they said they had friends who were unable to even upvote or post, but I didn't try either of those things.
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