Geometric incentive mechanisms and the "fixed constant" (the affiliate reward tree requires a fixed % budget from the token supply)
If for example for the marketing budget there is always a fixed percentage of the value of the reward pool then this fixed percentage can be worth billions, or hundreds of millions, or millions, or thousands of dollars, because the USD value is separate from the amount of tokens in the pool. So just as with Steem where for each Steem Dollar there is a variable amount of Steem, for each affiliate marketing SMT token there would be variable amount of Steem locked up for referral rewards.
But because you can set the price in terms of a fixed USD value, this would mean you can put a limit to a certain range. Say the limit for the referral marketing budget is 5% of the market cap? Well if the market cap is 10 billion then it would be 5% of 10 billion which is 500 million. You could in the smart contract have a fixed budget to promise similar rewards to what you see in Bitconnect up until the algorithm determines it is outside of the range of the budget and then the referral commissions should automatically decrease. In other words just like with mining how there is the concept of difficulty, there would have to be a similar cap on the referral marketing to make sure the rewards always exist to pay for it. Steem Dollars offer a proof of concept and affiliate rewards can be priced in Steem Dollars or similar which would lock up Steem.
It seems the rule is, that if the total reward for marketing in the system is a fixed constant, then there will always be enough tokens to pay for it. If too many people join the affiliate program for the budget to support then the reward for each affiliate goes down, such as if it starts as an infinite "tree" where you refer your friends, they refer their friends, they theirs, for infinity, then this is not going to be sustainable. To guarantee that there is always enough rewards to pay out would require making the levels variable not constant, so infinite levels are not possible, but the amount of levels and commissions rate could adjust algorithmically according to market conditions.
Preliminary conclusion
Steem has the technological advantages over networks like Bitconnect as well as the advantage in network effect. This advantage in my opinion is being squandered because Steem doesn't have any effective marketing and affiliate marketing is not implemented. So the purpose of my post is to explore the potential of affiliate marketing over Steem, which is a topic I think deserves more discussion and thought. Steem Dollars exist, and smart contracts can be used to apply a fixed budget constraint on any affiliate marketing program so as to guarantee that the rewards exist on the blockchain. If for 50 million dollars Steem could reach a 1 billion dollar market cap is it worth it? If for 500 million Steem can reach a 10 billion dollar market cap is it worth it? Steem developers promised a decentralized marketing technology, where is it and what will market these SMTs?