On the "imminent death" of Steem-Engine // "overpriced tokens" of steem-engine // and the fate of steem-engine in a post SMT world

This is a common thread that I find out there. @steemitblog just launched a piece about SMTs. Now, I'm seeing these types of questions. So, I want a post to address it.

The general questions are "What's going to happen to steem-engine after SMTS come out? Are you just gonna die? Also, your pricing is way too high, who is gonna want your much more expensive and slower tokens when I can just get a cheap and quick SMT?"

Those are fair questions, and I thought I should answer them. In short:

We're not going to die. We're going to kick ass.
These tokens are still vastly cheaper.
We're a smart contract platform, we do shit steem/SMTs can't/don't.

We're not going to die

Steem-engine isn't in competition with steemit or smts. We're going to help launch them. Steemit may or may not have a place where you can create these tokens. You will likely need a site to help you with a graphical user interface for the experience of actually creating your smt especially if you're a non-dev trying to get in there. We hope to be one of the first ones helping people set these things up.

Steemit may think that adding SMTs should be super cheap. I don't . I think it needs a BURN to make people buy steem off the market and burn it so the price gets out of the shitter. I don't buy the argument that just making them cheap is the way to go. If you make SMTs through steem-engine.com you're gonna burn Steem. It'll be more than 3.

If you don't make them through steem-engine, and later want your smt listed on steem-engine guess what we're gonna make you do?

I currently think 100-1000 steem is the right burn amount. TBD. The token creator might be mildly pissed at me for this (they won't actually care because a successful token launch can bring in so much more than 100-1000 Steem that it's peanuts anyway). The rest of the community can thank me later.

These tokens are vastly cheaper

"Hey dickhead, 3100 ENG costs more than 3 steem. Are you stupid?"

No, I'm not stupid, and please don't call me a dickhead, but you need to remember something. Getting your token listed costs a metric fuckton. A friend of mine with a well known project recently started his own blockchain project. He took his project to lots of different exchanges. The price tag to get his token listed at the cheapest was 2 btc. At the more expensive ones it was 15btc. They also didn't like the chain he was using, so he'd have to make an erc20 out of it.

So, yes 3100 ENG >> 3 Steem
but 3100 ENG << 3 Steem + 2-15 BTC

So, I remain confidant that I'm currently ~$20k cheaper than the SMT option IF you want it listed and tradable somewhere (ie if you want anyone in the ecosystem to think your token has value).

Internal Market

"But aggroed, they'll make an internal market for these. That'll smoke your exchange too!"

Well again, things that function just like Steem can be traded there, and there will be some. But things like NFTs and securities likely won't be there. I think there will be enough missing and enough legal hurdles that will make it like the internal market now: A nice quiet place to trade, but unlikely to compete with real exchanges.

The other challenge is incentive. People beyond just me are pushing steem-engine all the time. There's incentive for us to do this. We make money. No one makes money by pushing the internal exchange. There's no incentive. So, even though it's cool it never really gets mass adopted. Maybe this will be different with a worker proposal or something, but I personally doubt it. And even if it happens, it's still just SMTs, and not all the other things we do/can do.

SMTS and Scot are not mutually exclusive

I think in the future people are highly likely to have a SMT and pegged Scot or Scot and Pegged SMT in the future. I'm betting both will be a part of life. They will have different complementary functions.

By the way, I run a business. If you create a 3-steem SMT I'm going to charge you somewhere in the vicinity of 3000 ENG to get deposits enabled on my exchange. Hint: it's still cheaper than 2 BTC. Double hint: It'll be cheaper to just make a Scot and have it appear automatically.

So, rerun your maffs people.

I'm going to create my own exchange with blackjack and SMTs so I don't have to pay your stupid listing fees

That's great. You can do that. You can use the code we have because it's all opensource. The license is friendly and will allow you to do that.

As it turns out making the marketplace/exchange isn't that hard. git clone is easy enough that even I can do it. A major hurdle is getting people to use it. Maintaining this thing is harder than it looks. Adding features via new devs isn't quite so simple as my haters like to imagine.

If there's someone rich and powerful with their own community it's possible steem-engine might actually lose that race, but barring that I think you'll find that starting from scratch against what we've built even by copying exactly what we've built without the people that built it or the relationships we have will bring you costs, wasted time, a good learning experience, and a few new friends. It will be a neat journey but unlikely to give you a competing exchange.

Can you think of an example of that already?

fruits and veggies

A potato generally ins't in competition with a strawberry. I mean, yeah they are two foods you can eat, but one is a fruit and one is a vegetable. Unless you're absolutely broke and starving you typically want both in your diet (shut up keto people, this isn't about you). They are different parts of your diet.

Well compare them anyway...

If you want an SMT that is exactly an SMT and want it to be on the base layer than SMTs are better than Scot.
If you want something with an SMT ability that has any capability beyond SMTs I think it's likely Scot will be better.

Why? We can code 10x faster than steemit or the steem community can. That's not a diss on devs. That's a reality of coding at the blockchain layer rather than coding on a layer 2. It's also JS vs C++. We're always (as long as we don't start to suck) going to have more and better features then them. They may incorporate things we do later, but it's my contention we'll always be steps ahead because our process involves the side chain.

As long as SMTs are black

Look, I like the Henry Ford quote to describe this. The Model T comes in whatever color you want so long as that color is black.

SMTs are a robust protocol. They do a lot of things, but they do exactly 1 robust thing. They are SMTs. If you want anything for your token beyond that then SMTs aren't going to do it or they aren't likely to do it for a long time.

Steem-engine is a smart contract platform. We're adding a recurring payment system and NFTs as two examples of things we can add before it's even on Steemit's radar (or the communities radar) as a thing to add.

So, if you want a token that functions pretty much exactly like Steem does in Steemit.com then SMTs are going to be better for you than Scot. If you want a token that can or will do anything beyond the scope of what's included in the SMT whitepaper it's my contention that Scot will be better.

Conclusion

We won't die. We're going to kick ass! SMTs that have value aren't going to be cheaper than Scot. We're going to stay ahead. These things are complimentary anyway.

I'll see you again soon at steem-engine.com