Ever noticed the DNA-like structure of a chain? Every new blockchain stands for a small DNA mutation. Just like Darwin stated, natural selection will dictate which blockchains are best suited for their environments.
Sometimes, out of 1 little mutation like Steem, a totally new species arrives, welcome to Smart Media Tokens
If you don’t know what SMT is about, this post is not (yet) for you, announcement happened here , whitepaper you find here
The concept of rewarding is as natural as saying “Thank You”. Whether it is for thanking somebody to answer your question or for just providing you some information, fact is that we like to express our gratitude to anything that enriches our path.
Any subspecies of SMT will provide just that and IT IS APPLICABLE EVERYWHERE.
THERE IS NO DOMAIN FOR WHICH A REWARDING SYSTEM CAN NOT BE USED
Currently we have fantastic Steemians who are working successfully on DTube, DSound, DLive, DManiia, etc., all systems with the same principle as Steemit, i.c. media production that gets rewarded.
The “M” in Smart Media suggests similar MEDIA applications for SMT, e.g. other type of social platforms, get paid to watch porn etc... (This last is announced as SMT by Vice, check it out or maybe not)
But the M in SMT is way too limiting for what is coming, I would have chosen “Smart Reward Token” or “Smart Information Token”. SMT will be broader than media (e.g. Utopian.io) and last but not least SMT could stand for “Suck My Teeth”. Ok, forget about that…
Fact is that in the silent corners of Telegram and Discord, entrepreneurs and developers are seeing possibilities that would blow your mind away. As @Ned stated in his last public interview...
"...Our jaws dropped..."
Just to give you a tiny publicly known example; In that same interview, somebody came up with the plan to make a kind of WebMD SMT. Rewards for best solutions for medical problems.
If you know how the classic medical websites are influenced by pharmacy and how alternative solutions are being pushed away, then you might realise this is a winning horse. Now I wouldn’t mind the same idea for other topics such as car problems, computer issues, etc.…. I already see a thousand other SMT’s based on what I hear with this one example.
But then, there is oh so much more that fits SMT. As I said before and I repeat “There is no domain for which a rewarding system can not be used”. I invite you to think about this instead of giving you 100 other examples. Think about all these rewarding systems already existing going from game credits to frequent flyer miles.
To say that SMT’s are going to be big is the biggest understatement ever, this is going to be massive, a new species will arise and remain forever.
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FUD?
SMT is not ready yet and I truly wonder if they will be able to pull it off in an acceptable time frame. The original creator of the Steem blockchain has left. What have we seen since then? Nothing that made me enthusiastic. Modifications like Linear rewards and delegations were meant to draw investors in!? The programming time needed for anybody following up on @Dan is at least 3x the time @Dan would need. These are general development statistics and it might be x 10 for a genius like him.
The announcement of new Class A Programmers entering the team doesn’t make me happier. This mostly slows down the whole development, another known development statistic
While a test net is close to ready, it will be a very meager version and I don’t think we should expect SMT before Q3. That is painful as it was announced for Q1, so many times investors have been (again!) deceived with Steem.
Anoter annoying news is the tension between @Dan and @Ned. Dan really has the ability to create a faster, leaner and meaner SMT Species on EOS. He is one of the best blockchain engineers out there. Please make him your friend @Ned, not your enemy, he is one of the reasons you are where you are now!
THE END OF STEEMIT
This is no FUD and a very interesting possibility arising with SMT. You can create your own coin, you don’t have to airdrop and give tokens to Steem holders. Imagine you create an SMT and you airdrop with a maximum of 50K Steem per person, by this action the whales are out. We now have a more democratic Steem with a good distribution, the whole concept of whales can be dropped.
And then you have a lot more parameters to play with, you can make a SteemIt as you would like it, back to n2 rewards, no delegation, a lot will be possible, up to you. Imagine rewards based on number of votes coupled to reputation of the voter, isn’t that we all dream of?
Suddenly, the existing alternatives on SteemIt like Busy.org, ChainBB, eSteem etc. could launch an SMT and get rid of the existing rules introduced by SteemIt. A Trending page might finally reflect what we like.
There are also existing communities who are ready to launch an SMT and make us forget about what we once knew as SteemIt
Another feature that will be possible is that you will have posts that can be upvoted by different tokens, this could lead to different kind of Trending Pages all in the same interface, this opens up so many possibilities.
I am very excited about the competition that Steemit will get and i think chances are pretty high of a competitor taking over the lead
MY TAKE ON SMT
As a personal note and as a developer, I would be most interested in approaching the Steem blockchain through an application, not a website. The result could be the first 100% decentralized social platform.
SteemIt, the company, isn’t decentralized.
- You only need to count up the top 5 accounts to get more than 50% of Steem Power.
- It is an American company that can be taken down.
- The website SteemIt.com can be taken down, things we have to consider as we want FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!!
Blockchain is about the power back to us, the people. It is a revolution, don’t let anything get in the way of that!!!
Think Torrent if I say application, nobody will ever be able to stop torrents. They can take down all websites referring to torrents but torrents will just keep running, just like the Steem blockchain and the nifty app I am talking about.
These thoughts are out there and I think that’s fantastic because we will get what we want and some internal competition will be very healthy.
I see some scary whales but absolutely no need BECAUSE…
100 000 COMPANIES
@Ned mentioned a possible 100K companies going SMT in the coming 5 years. Ha! Wow!
Is that a possible scenario? Seriously, what do you think? I think it is quite a big number but if the necessary easy plug-ins for existing infra-structures come into play and the first implementations in certain fields start to gain on their competitors, we might get a pursuit avalanche effect. That is probably how @Ned thinks this will manifest, a few 100 in 2018 and then 2000, 6000, 20000, 70000 in the next years. Phew.. Big numbers eh...
Let's take it with a grain of salt. There would be another problem as (if I remember well from the white paper) +/-5K Steem has to be vested to have the necessary bandwidth for running an SMT. That would mean there would be a demand for 500 000 000 Steem.
Wait a minute, we don’t have so many tokens :-) Did anybody say Moon? :-)
Bottom line is that even at a 10% realisation of this bold statement, SMT's will be good for Steem, no need to panic .
1000 FOLLOWERS
Almost 1000 followers while I made 15 posts. I hope that proves you don’t need to be the most amazing blogger to get some followers. I am using my 10 votes/day wisely and I participate a lot in the comment sections.
Haha, i am tricking you, i just have Steem Power
Who am I? I need a few more lives to find that out but in my current reincarnation I escaped the European system and I live in India with my partner and 2 children 11 and 15yr old, born and raised here. I am a digital nomad, programmer for a living, working for European companies.
I lived in an amazing community with 
I have fought and lost many freedom battles but I won my personal battle and I think the advent of blockchains is the biggest revolution ever that will change EVERYTHING and I am willing to fight for that.
I hope you too!
Take care,
Bub
