No one else believes in decentralized token rewards (a/k/a Proof-of-Brain) like we do. But the most important reason we’re developing them is that no one else is.

No one else is trying to solve these problems...

One question that a businessman should ask himself is, "What problem am I trying to solve?"

I think the question to ask here may be, "Why does nobody else see this problem?" or, "Why is nobody else trying to solve it?"

I know a lot of time and other resources has gone into SMTs. But...what are we trying to solve and does anyone else care?

If nobody sees the unique "problem" here as an actual problem, then what makes it so attractive for potential investors to sink their money into a project that's working on "resolving" it? Would it not be better or more useful to find the things that the market is demanding and then fill that need? The token-creation and ICO craze has pretty much bottomed-out over the past year. It can be done on other platforms by competent developers and they still don't garner much attention or sustain any long-term hype and investment. So why would a "turn-key" solution that's available to any schmo running a blog site suddenly be more attractive to potential investors?

I think what's lost in all of the internal Steem hype about SMTs is the fact that there is practically nobody outside of Steem interested in creating this "solution" and seemingly no interest in Steem itself for being "the only" blockchain attempting it. In the investment world, if this were truly a revolutionary and/or highly-demanded thing, there would be tons of speculative hype surrounding it.

But there is none.

If this continues to be the case, then it will likely just turn into an albatross for the Steem blockchain. And it will be an albatross that we can't simply roll back. I think there needs to be much more careful consideration about the impact on the Steem blockchain that this will have - on both resources/performance and perception.