Yeah, and I agree with @ats-david and others who question whether SMTs is even something that matters at all.
My concerns about SMTs go far beyond whether they'll "matter at all." I actually think that they potentially represent a huge risk to the Steem blockchain and its users, both legally and financially/economically.
When you start introducing the possibility of ICOs (many of which are considered "securities" by the SEC) and an internal token exchange (where each exchange of a token may be considered a taxable event by the IRS), you begin wading into territory that is begging for government scrutiny and forced compliance from regulators...the very things that these blockchains and cryptocurrencies were supposed to try to avoid.
Not to mention the fact that the ability to create shitcoins and trade them on the blockchain will add a potentially enormous amount of bloat without necessarily adding any real value.
It's a huge risk that should not be considered lightly. And once it goes forward, there's no rolling it back, because of the financial and potential regulatory aspects of it.
I am very happy I vote for your witness.
Steemit suffers from the same failings most businesses fall into such as exclusivity of hierarchy, lack of communication, and partial deafness. It is important for the flaws to be pointed out in hopes of or in an effort to enact change. The more voices constructively talking about those flaws the better i think.
this is my feeling as well. with SMTs come things like jerrybanfield coins. A whole wave of useless tokens that get one person rich, where they cash out and move to the next scam.
how will SMTs incentivize an average user to adopt steemit, as opposed to addressing that some 95% of value on the platform is held by some 1%? or that nobody actually reads anything on here?
Which jurisdiction is Steem the blockchain under? Is each node under the jurisdiction of the country/state/whatever where it's physically located? How are the witness nodes geographically located?
Shitcoin bloat is a huge concern of mine. What people ate just dying to make their own new tokens? Scammers and fools.
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I always felt SMT's were based on the premise that we live in an ideal world where everyone happens to be an honest entrepreneur who sees the potential in monetizing a comment box on Quora.com or whatever.
But using Steem as a sociological experiment, we can really get a great perspective to what huge extent individuals on a global scale are willing to milk, milk, milk at every corner. SMTs are going to be an open floodgate... to what, remains to be seen...
(Vote our new @stem.witness - witness of @steemstem, your favourite circle jerk)