RE: Incentive trees and what we can learn from Bitconnect
Steemit used to have "vesting" which paid interest on Steem Power, Steem Dollars, etc, just for holding. I think of Steem Power as the "vesting wallet". I think of Bitconnect where they figured something out, like for Bitconnect loaning is the equivalent to mining conceptually. In Bitconnect there is the "lending wallet".
If you loan you might get rewarded some variable interest for the day. On Steemit you might get rewarded if you blog or hold Steem Power. On Bitcoin you might get rewarded if you buy an expensive mining rig and you mine.
All of these are the same at the core. Essentially in every case you mine with your dollars. You put money into some smart contract or equipment in the hope that you will take out more than you put in after some fixed period of time. In Steemit or DPOS they called this "vesting". In Bitcoin it's adjusted by the difficulty algorithm and it's Proof of Work.
So in theory I do think it is possible to achieve the goal of a sustainable affiliate marketing protocol on top of Steem SMTs, and I think it is well worth it to implement this after looking not just at the success of Bitconnect but the fact that some of the top bloggers on Steem who brought thousands of people to the site are now doing it for Bitconnect. To get people like that back on the side of Steem requires Steem actually do something to allow the marketers to actually be rewarded for promoting Steem at least at a level good enough to be seen as the safer alternative.
Imagine what good it could do for Steem if people were on Youtube telling people to buy Steem and power up, and if these people earned a commission it could still be worth it.
Excellent point, recently I wrote an article about how Steem and EOS could benefit from the continual mulit-sig Ethereum wallet problems....In it I wrote essentially about the SMT and how it can help push their agenda further....Thinking about it now, Steem itself can launch its own SMT for marketers, where marketers are rewarded base on the amount of volume that they bring in, What do you think....I also think moving forward, once Steem establishes itself and the price of Steem moves above 2.50, they can pegged it against Steem instead of USD as to help restrict the amount SBD in circulation as less would have to be produced because we all agree that crypto prices would continue to trend higher.... The challenges Steem faces is creating an incentive, everyone won't be bloggers, how now can we create an environment that encourages participants, one may say curation rewards but I believe that isn't enough as we can see happening....I am also very concern about the potential effects flagging could have on the SMT if participants for whatever reasons start flagging projects, so lets see how it plays out