Smart Media Tokens: What I Learned in small hours of the dawn
Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) in a nutshell:
Is a set of standardised tools that allow publishers to launch ICO on the back of Steemit. The ICO will be solely funded by STEEM (other crypto currencies to be processed manually off-chain) and optionally have market making mechanism for issued SMT to STEEM convertibility.
Why it matters?
SMTs represent the next step in Steemit ecosystem evolution, graduating from the centralised to hub-and-spoke model. The current centralised model presumes a single point of entry – Steemit website (there are some alternatives mentioned in the whitepaper, but they are all relatively small), where all the value is generated and redistributed in platform’s functional currency - STEEM. Currently it means that STEEM is a unit of account and a medium of exchange, but very poor (due to built-in inflation) store of value.
SMTs standard would enable wider communities beyond crypto currency world to take advantage of key vote-reward mechanics, sucking new users into the ecosystem and making STEEM the reserve currency or a store of value (notwithstanding the inflation).
- With the SMTs popularisation and the resulting demand coming from the new users would likely cause upward revaluation of STEEM price.
- With the advent of Hub-and-Spoke model we are likely to see exponentially more competition at the Hub (Steemit) in the future, as new authors with large existing Audiences will be crowding out smaller players.
- More fragmented content (that is being originated at the Spokes) and the fact that it will be originated outside the Platform (unlike the closed Platform of today) will likely to spur the development of meta-search and recommendation engine or at least the syndication services, with clear monetisation path in the form of advertising
Speculation: Steemit-SMTs as a blueprint for possible EOS development?
Given the interlocking management teams of Steemit and EOS, the fact that both platforms are developed on Graphene blockchain and EOS stated mission of “Massively reducing the difficulty of building decentralised applications” could it be possible the SMTs are the pilot project on how EOS development will proceed?
After all the stated EOS goals of self-describing interfaces, databases and generalised role- based permissions sound fancy but if catered to wide Audience means they are too general and if for narrow – too impractical.
On the other hand enabling EOS developers to produce standardised solutions for specific needs similar to Wordpress/ Shopify plugins, might be exactly what we are seeing in the form of Steemit to SMTs use case transition?
I hope that some time over the next month or so, Ned will announce special prizes for the most thoughtful member contributions towards further progress in the SMT project. If he does so, I predict that this contribution will be among the prizewinners.
First, it makes clear what is the underlying problem that the SMT project is addressing and the related strategy. Second, it points to some important issues or hurdles that would need to be addressed as we go forward in trying to implement the strategy.
As regards the strategy, I wonder if the field of potential applications should not be immediately broadened beyond media content. This might complicate the programming challenge significantly; but I strongly suspect that even within the field of media content, as we move among different sets of applications the software that embodies the protocol will need to be tweaked.
There is an implicit focus on enabling ICO’s, which could be tricky if the whole ICO process falls into deep disrepute because some prominent ICO's have conspicuously failed to deliver on their promises. As you are aware, there is already speculation in the literature that a cloud could come over the entire ICO movement if there are only a few of these well-publicized failures to deliver.
Then there is a question of the arrival of stringent regulations, with China and Korea already delivering I heads-up for the rest of us.
What's my point here? It might be a good idea to search hard for use cases that do not have such a prominent focus on facilitating ICO’s.
As I reflect upon my multiple burn scars from trading options, I feel compelled to throw cold water on speculations about what will cause upward revaluation in STEEM price. Revaluations upward or downward will always be a function of multivariate processes; so no matter what we think a particular force among these processes might do, when you get down to cases it is very difficult to predict accurately what is actually going to happen because of the other forces in the ‘pot’.
Finally, the image of bewildering fragmentation of content already besets Steamit, from my perspective as a newcomer in the Steamit space . I would worry a lot if this problem gets much worse.
Here's an example. This morning I wrote a short and somewhat silly piece (silly if I thought it would make any money) about practices programmers should follow in presenting and writing about code for the purposes of helping those coming from other programming languages or people on the edge of programming who would like to get in.
The piece seemed to disappear from the “New” menu in about 10 minutes, and when I came back another 10 minutes later to try and locate it, that became quite a struggle! Even going into the section where I thought the classification process would place the piece I couldn't find it.
This little incident tells you that the people who are crowing about how you will make money writing on Steeemit need to base their advice on some more sophisticated research about the process. (It’s not easy, and nor should it be.) I certainly emerged from this process of trying to find my little piece with a strong feeling that the entire procedure of allocating articles to sections needs major surgery.
Hi lestatisticien,
Thank you for your contribution. I certainly did not expect anyone to give a serious note of my 2c. I very much think so too that they need to branch off the social media context. But that would also imply a) potentially colliding with the EOS project b) assuming risks that might not pay off c) developing protocol or the whole ecosystem needed for that. This might be just a bit to much to cover. However, betting on where the action is - ICOs is a sure thing to get some publicity and new users into the fold (at meta level they also compete with Ethereum), kinda what Elon Musk is doing with his car lineup - get the experimental roadster in (Steemit), produce something sexy S (SMT ICOs) and then go for mass market (EOS). Actually that kinda makes quite a bit of sense, because by having SMTs they have new media channels to drive more traffic into the ecosystem.
As for the trading I do wholeheartedly agree with you. As JP Morgan said - token prices will fluctuate. However, preconditions are quite favourable for price appreciation as supply is limited, but the demand is likely to be high. I was reading the other day a post on Hackernoon, basically saying that the ICO market (primarily driven by ether) is getting saturated. Well, that means that all the hopeful ones will start looking for alternatives... But yep it is all speculation and open risk in the end of the day. With regards to articles write up - I think it will get much worse then currently is. I am reading around of special services that bump up your post for a fee, meaning the small fish will be inevitably driven out by deep pockets. It is the nature of the game i guess. The best we can do is to try to build the following before the lid will be closed. And by the way your idea on making a SO like message board is golden! This realm definitely needs it.
Thank you for your most interesting comment, dv8, and apologies for my late reply. Only today did I learn (I am a Newbie) where to go to keep track of replies. I guess I got lazy from all my forum services which arrange to have an email messages sent to you when there are replies.
I take your point that branching away from the focus on media content might make the project unmanageable complex, while at the same time bringing up some serious competition that is perhaps best avoided for now.
With regard to showcasing and properly rewarding articles with valuable green content I am seeing a lot of complaints in posts that I have covered over the last several days. Moreover I was astonished to see a person with a huge following bringing to Steemit a few days ago about five paragraphs out of an article he published in Wired and he promptly got rewarded with the STEEM equivalent of 700+ dollars, due to the huge number of up-votes. The green content in that article is practically zero! So from where I sit, that is a huge discouragement regarding brining green content to Steemit.
So I'll just probably limit myself to commenting on stuff that other people do, and occasionally contributing articles that represent community service (see mine of today at https://steemit.com/stm/@lestatisticien/synopsis-of-steemit-community-members-views-on-issues-to-address-on-the-road-toward-a-successful-roll-out-of-smts ).
Much as I have a strong distaste for the various sources of block voting to help the minnows, I don't think we have much choice but to use them!
I just gave you my first ever UpVote!