Delegated Proof of Stake
A version of proof of stake where coin holders vote for a small fixed set of block producers instead of validating themselves.
The protocol caps the number of producers, commonly a few dozen, and stake-weighted votes decide who occupies those slots; the elected producers then take turns making blocks on a fixed schedule. Because a small, known group coordinates, blocks are fast and fees are low, which is the main attraction of the design. The trade-offs are concentration and politics: the producer set is small enough to be identifiable, producers sometimes share hosting infrastructure, and some networks have seen producers share rewards with voters to secure re-election. EOS and TRON use variants of this model, and it is distinct from delegating stake to a validator on a network with a large open validator set, which is simply delegation.
In practice
In a delegated system the protocol itself limits block production to the top-ranked candidates by vote, so a producer that loses an election stops making blocks entirely.
The common misunderstanding
Delegating stake to a validator on an open network is not delegated proof of stake; the term refers to protocols that restrict block production to a small elected group.