Hi, it’s me Steve again. In case you missed my introduction post (https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gerbino/hello-world), I’m one of the blockchain developers here at Steem. I’m excited about the work we’re doing on SMTs and I’d like to talk briefly about some of our efforts around Smart Media Tokens. There is no doubt the team wants to push out a great product as soon as possible. Part of the strategy here is to strip out features that do not provide value.

Hidden Caps

“Hidden Caps” is one of those features. What are caps? The cap is the amount of STEEM contributed to an ICO for it to be considered a success. A hidden cap simply keeps that magic number private until the ICO creator “reveals” it. Hidden Caps added all sorts of complications in the SMT ICO process with regards to revealing hidden caps and various unnecessary ICO statuses. We’ve consulted with community developers and all have supported the removal of this feature.

By removing Hidden Caps, which provide little value, we are simplifying the whole process moving forward which directly translates to a faster release of SMTs. This is a big win in my opinion because we can now remove:

• Post Contribution Phase: The period of time during which the ICO contribution phase has concluded but the creator did not reveal hidden caps
• Launch Expiration Time: The time provided to the token creator after the ICO contribution phase has ended to reveal the hidden caps.
• The Cap Commitment Functionality: The token creator basically makes a promise to the chain to what the hidden caps actually are before they are revealed.

Not only can we remove all of that, but we can also strip out the associated operations and tests, cleaning up and streamlining the entire process.

Let’s move forward and make SMTs a reality, shall we?

-Steve