Why SMTs are not a distraction but a necessity
Smart Media Tokens are here. The whitepaper is out and people are talking about it.
Some are very enthusiastic and others are skeptical. I am here to share with you why it was absolutely essential for SMT to exist to prevent our developers from breaking away into their own chains and coins.
I love to talk with devs and here what they had to say
Devs are one of the most precious human capital we have on the STEEM blockchain. Ultimately, the future value of the STEEM token rest on their shoulders. Because of the current setting, without #SMT, the devs are on shaky ground and may even consider creating their own chains to accomplish what they want to accomplish. Let me explain...
So let's take the example of a very promising project by @jesta -> CHAINBB. @jesta poured countless number of hours to make this MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Once the app is running, he could consider bring it to the next level...but he faces this dilemma:
There are too many things outside of his control
If you want to build a long term business, you want to make sure to have as much control on your future as possible. You want to be able to control your development environment as much as possible. Some businesses may have completely different needs when it comes to inflation, reward curves, etc.
There is also the issue of hardforks...what if the witness decide to go to a different kind of reward curve and by doing so completely destroy your business model?
With SMTs, devs have control over a lot of the parameters without having to operate the infrastructure.
Too difficult to bootstrap
You see, Steemit had good development funds by having the ability to mine most coins at the beginning. That gave them a long enough runway to work on the infrastructure to allow the technology to scale.
That's great but what if @jesta wants to raise fund the same way to build a team and a business? He couldn't before UNLESS he started a new blockchain. Arbitrary reward from people posting was not enough.
Conclusion
I believe that now that we gave the ability for devs to control as much as possible on their environment and business model while giving them an ICO platform, we will be much less prone to have people making copy cat of STEEM in order for them to achieve their goals. I'm very happy of this new tech and I can't wait to see the value of STEEM soar to new height!
Hello @cryptoctopus
It had always been said that Di - Vision ( Two Visions) brings division.
It was a smart initiative on the part of Steem Inc to introduce the SMT because it solves a lot of problems and opens the doors to multiple opportunities.
One of Steemit long term visions is community building and the SMT will make it easier. A community Leader in his Niche like @papa-pepper can now bring his community closer with his token.
This will also make Steem adoption fast. It is advancements like this that will make Steem take its rightful place.
Shared on Twitter.
@ogochukwu
I always try to understand. And why it was impossible to allow everyone to use for their sites the same STEЕM, or cbd? Why do we need more varieties of tokens?
Different currencies/tokens have different characteristics and each require different feautures to operate, so in order to prevent Steem Devs to go out and create tokens that will satisfy their business needs it is better to keep them in the Steem Universe making Steem the main currency.
did you understand by reading the article?
Alas, not quite: (((
Here I have a website, I want to encourage my readers. But they, it seems to me, it would be more pleasant to receive not my own tokens, but the CTEЕM tokens, which are already promoted and have a real price.
they don't even have to know it's a steem token or dlina token. All they would see would be the $ value for the most part. All of that would be processed through the Disqus like app that might be develop in the future for independent websites.
Now if they see only dollars, it will be cool! :)
I'll wait for the end of the development.
only problem with tokens i see if some scammers will host icos and then scam people and dump all steem at cheapest price , or if some project buy this tokens for their sites and it failed hard and again bump :) overall tokens are good but need to see
true but at least we have a way to expose and evaluate ICOs publicly since we have a place to express ourselves.
The less business destroyed, the better!
Defining what users can and cannot do is not a proactive business development strategy.
Keep putting the busy in business, @cryptoctopus
All great but where are the lawyers? Developers don't tell us if the SEC is going to crack down on Steem SMTs done wrong. Before I even consider issuing or launching an SMT I would have to know how they fit legally and what it could cost me in terms of regulatory risk.
ICOs are great but unless the ICO raises enough money to pay the fines of the SEC it's not going to be worth risking it.
It's not the blockchain jobs or Steemit job to give your lawyers or law advices to make an ICO lawfully in your country. If you want to start a business, you should be responsible of the legals just like you would be with everything else.
So when the SEC cracks down do you think they are going to care? Fact is, if people get arrested and it makes news or if countries ban Steemit then how is this good for the price of the Steem token? It's not.
We might not agree with the SEC or the crackdown but if we know there is a crackdown then an ICO market on Steemit will invite those concerned about ICOs to investigate the Steemit community. Not an ideal situation for the price of Steem.
Maybe one of the first ICOs over this SMT platform should be from a legal services company. A lot of money can be made helping people legally do ICOs over Steemit.
Do you see Ethereum foundation doing legal counseling for ICOs? No. EOS and other serious companies do their homework first. The fear of an SEC crackdown is exactly what is going to keep people in line.
When did I ever say Steemit Inc should do legal counseling? What a bizarre reply to a comment I never made.
And it's not a matter of "fear". It's a matter of being organized so that if you want a bunch of ICOs or token sales that it can be done in a compliant way so that people can make money over Steem and actually keep it. You cannot grow an ecosystem if most of the money goes to legal fees and fines.
Lawyers and similar need to sell a token we can all buy for their services. This way speculation on the risk of a crackdown can cause people to buy the tokens in advance if they feel they might need them. The big issue is going to be there could be a shortage of lawyers to go to. The other issue is the cost of the lawyers is so damn high that we all have an incentive to reduce the cost of the legal fees using the Steemit technology if possible.
Please respond to my argument and not a phantom argument.
Implying that it would be their job to tell you all the regulatory risks of SMTs.
I don't need to imply. I was talking about lawyers in these comments who usually post when anyone mentions ICOs. Suddenly they aren't around?
And yes I do think while Steemit doesn't have to do anything to mitigate the risks it is still appropriate for Steemit to warn about the risks. It is what I would do if I were running the company because people need to know and weigh the pros and cons.
I will offer an example just for instance. If you go to any crowd funding website which is legitimate then no they do not offer "legal counsellings" but they do make it clear that there are risks and that you may need to seek legal counsel before you do certain things. Then they direct you to the resources you need.
Steemit Inc in my opinion should make the risks clear and then direct people to the resources they may need. This doesn't mean Steemit Inc has any responsibility to provide legal services because Steemit isn't a legal services company. To launch something like SMT while not even mentioning that it might be legally risky is in my opinion a mistake. Let people go into it knowing the situation, and then they can pay for the legal services necessary to launch.
Thanks for the #SMT introduction, I feel I need to do more research in this area! It sounds really promising though, and makes a lot of sense regarding developers needing a high degree of control over the parameters of their project, not depending on what some witness might declare.
@cryptoctopus Yeah for sure you opinion is a good one . Thanks for sharing ,keep in touch !
your @braveheart22 ,
great post
Wow, you are so great.. I can't wait to be like you on steemit..
I strongly believe that one day, I'll make it just like you do..