That 2 year thing is long gone it's now 13 weeks to power down. If you haven't you can check out the Blue Paper which is a condensed version of the New White Paper.

My take on the SMTs is that Steemit wants to provide a tool for anyone that wants to power their websites with a blockchain token without the need to develop a blockchain.

I expect a lot of shitcoins to come out of this...and a few scams. But I also expect that some serious projects will be borne out of this.