We have been waiting sometime now for SMTs to be delivered by Steemit Inc, with the ideology that they will drive up the demand for Steem and attract more developers, more businesses and more users to the blockchain.
In the meantime, 
I won’t pretend to know much about blockchain. I don’t fully understand how all this works and so what I am about to say might very well be down to lack of education or even ignorance.
I don’t think SMTs or steem-engine tokens will drive up the demand for steem. I think it makes everything more confusing to the mainstream person and will mean less adoption, not more!
How many mainstream businesses that you know of have begun to utilize the benefits of smart contract? How many home/online-based entrepreneurs have embraced this technology to add value to their business? Not very many, right?
It seems to me, the only people using these are developers that see it as a way of raising funds. Hence the success of ICO’s. however, the market is full of speculators, most of which look for short term gains and so the entire market is volatile, they are not long term institutional investors.
Mainstream organizations have the option to use blockchain services and solutions provided by other mainstream organizations, such as Microsoft. You know that already right?
Have you ever tried to explain and recruit users to steem?
Friend - “What is steem?”
Me - “Steem is a blockchain where you can find content and creations. It ran off a blockchain, where instead of the new coins created going to miners like bitcoin, some of the new coins are used to reward those active on the platform. So, you can reward your favorite blogger or artist with a simple upvote that has a value. And your favorite blogger can reward you back if you engage with them on their posts”
Friend - “Awesome – how do I get started?”
Me - “Well first you need a steem wallet. And then you need to ensure you have like a deposit of steem in the wallet, which you can get back when every you want, but you need this to be active. The larger the deposit the more you can do and the more your vote is worth.
Friend - “So I need to sign up for a steem wallet.”
Me - “Yes”
Friend - “Then I need to put a deposit in it. How do I do that and how do I get the deposit back.
Me - “you need to sign up with an exchange. There are some places you can buy steem for cash, but most you will have to buy bitcoin or other coins first and then swap them for steem and then transfer them to your steem wallet and power it up.”
Friend - “What the fuck Paula…. you must have nothing to do with your life…. that’s way too much hassle.”
Fact are, the mainstream audience is lazy. Online attention span has dropped from 12 seconds a few years back to only 7 seconds now.
Think about this for a second. You land on a website, you like the content, you want to sign up for the newsletter, ah man…this sign up form requires to much work, you couldn’t be bothered. You leave the site. This is the way it is.
Now let’s bring SMTS and steem-engine tokens into this. Let’s pretend I issued an Excel Token for https://theexcelclub.com/ . Here’s how I see the conversation going
Friend - “What’s this Excel token?”
Me - “It's basically value for learning, the more you learn the more you tokens you will be rewarded. You can use them to pay for premium content on my site.”
Friend - “Cool, how do I get started”
Me - “First you need a steem account.”
Friend - “What is steem?”
Me - “Steem is a blockchain where you can find content and creations. It ran off a blockchain, where instead of the new coins created going to miners like bitcoin, some of the new coins are used to reward those active on the platform. So, you can reward your favorite blogger or artist with a simple upvote that has a value. And your favorite blogger can reward you back if you engage with them on their posts”
Friend - “Awesome – how do I get started?”
Me - “Well first you need a steem wallet. And then you need to ensure you have like a deposit of steem in the wallet, which you can get back when ever you want, but you need this to be active. The largest the deposit the more you can do and the more your vote is worth.
Friend - “So I need to sign up for a steem wallet.”
Me - “Yes”
Friend - “Then I need to put a deposit in it. How do I do that and how do I get the deposit back.
Me - “you need to sign up with an exchange. There are some places you can buy steem for cash, but most you will have to buy bitcoin or other coins first and then swap them for steem and then transfer them to your steem wallet”
Friend - “What the fuck Paula…. you must have nothing to do with your life…. that’s way too much hassle.”
Me - “Hold on, I’m not finished. Then you need to go to steem engine and trade the steem for the excel token, or if you have the excel token and want cash, you need to go to steem engine, change it to steem, transfer it to an exchange, trade it for cash or another coin, then transfer it to your bank so you can spend it.”
Really Dudes. You think this is going to work? Please explain to me where I am going wrong and how you see it working.
Don’t get me wrong, I love steem. Heck, I am trying to use it to push my own business forward. I just think, you need to walk before you can run. Things need to be a lot easier for mainstream adoption and until then, its speculation, volatile markets. I would love to see steemit inc focus on making steem a great content discovery and publishing platform, without having to jump between hoops to get up and running. I would love to see steemit inc focus their energy on making steemit.com an awesome platform and go back to the original white paper for utilization of the block. I would love to see the price of steem rise for those reasons alone.
How it feels to me with SMTs is that steemit inc are living in hope that a few ICO type things happen brining in influxes of large steem buyers, short term demand will do. They can exit at a better price and the market will do what it does…the token will become less valuable as just like on steemit they will struggle for human users. But steemit inc will have push out the losses to initial SMT investors. It’s not really a long-term solution to raise the price of steem.
If you can convince me I am wrong, if your opinion differs, I would love to hear from you. Please do drop your comment below.