I was eagerly waiting for the announcement on this one, as I truly believe SMT will be the technology that will massively disrupt the Steem blockchain. A bit later than I thought, and a bit too far in the future than I expected, but at least now we know:

SMT - Smart Media Tokens - will be released on March 2019. Before that, they will be available on a testnet implemented form January 2019.

All this is official news, finally.

Although I was waiting to see this sooner - as one of the projects I've working on, Hive account@runcoin, is actually relying on this technology, hence, it's on hold now - but I think the release dates are ok.

First of all, we're in a bear market for more than six months now and this is not the best moment to launch a new platform. You will lose significant exposure and traction, two things that are way cheaper during bull markets.

Second, there must be at least a 3 months buffer between a hardfork and another major release, and Velocity, Hardfork 0.20, will be released in September.

And third, having at least six months for operational stuff, from marketing to human resources, will give companies willing to implement SMTs a very useful buffer to get prepared.

All in all, I remain strongly bullish on STEEM and SMT, even more after this announcement.

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me Hive account@dragosroua.

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