Possible problems, flaws and scenarios why SMT will fail.
To be honest with you, I don't see me as someone who knows enough about blockchain, and Steemit in general and also Smart Media Tokens, so I am not here to judge, I am doing this post to ask some questions about SMT.
From what I understand Smart Media Token will be huge since it will provide every other contributing platform with the same benefits that we have here on Steemit. It will enable other community platforms like for example the Huffington Post community to have monetized and incentivised content, content curation and comments, and to be fair this looks very solid to me since this is just what they need to have an even better user engagement. Every possible social media community will be able to issue their own Smart Media token via initial coin offerings (ICO's) which will cost just $1 to start. So SMT will going to be big, but will they really?
Almost every post I see about SMT is very positive regarding it's future and also the future of Steemit.com. Most of us are truly convinced by it's upcoming success, still @ned not only wanted us to love this idea but also question it and tare it apart if we can. However since those news about SMT have been announced I personally have not seen people questioning it or even talking about why it could possibly fail. Are SMT completely flawless or are we just not paying attention on it's downsides for several reasons? Of cause we all want it to succeed and so we rather talk about the positive aspects it has, but shouldn't we at least try to also find things which speak against those new SMT?
As stated above I am by no means an expert on this topic, not a genius brain that could find problems buried deep under technical understanding of any blockchain related topics. However I can still see the macroscopic picture of Steemit and cryptocurrencies in general. According to that picture I have I can at least see one problem which SMT will maybe facing. The change in the reputation of ICO's in general. Since there are already more than 1000 different coins out there and we already saw some ugly things happening with several ICO's even some governments have started paying attention resulting in regulations of ICO's. For many ICO's out there those regulations now prohibit people of country's like China, South Korea, and also the United States in contributing in those ICO's. My guess is that those regulations will also take effect on the new Smart Media Token which will also be issued as ICO's. Please correct me if I am wrong with that guess. I also saw one comment at thebitcoinpup.com which stated regarding to the topic of SMT: “!Be Prepared for a tsunami of shitcoins!”
Furthermore I have already started to ask some people where they see any problems with the upcoming Smart Media Tokens, and one of the answers I got was from @anarchyhasnogods. He told me to have a look at how much more data the Steem blockchain is able to store and process which implies the question if the Steemit blockchain will technically have the resources to take all the new SMT on top of Steem. Since I am not an expert and I have far too little knowledge about the technical details I am not possible to give an answer on that question, but I am certain that you guys can. So how much more data is the Steemit blockchain able to process and how will that interfere with the concept of Smart Media Token?
There has to be more. Currently I am still waiting for some more answers on the question what could speak against SMT. Also I will be digging deeper for myself to identify any flaws. I am certain that you guys will come up with several ideas that show us some flaws in SMT on the microscopic or technical level but also on the bigger picture. Like, will big companies and websites like YouTube or the New York Times even be interested in integrating a third party protocol to their platform, or will they rather try to find a way to do their own protocol which enables the same benefits for their communities?
Feel free to join and ask questions or give us statements or even reasons why SMT will fail. At least let us try to think critical about it and identify the possible flaws or things which speak against Smart Media Token even if you are already convinced that this will be a huge success for Steemit.com
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Thank you for reading and please leave your thoughts in the comments.
With much love
Good post and i voted you with 100% for 7 cents only. i wish i could do more for the post.
Thank you very much, feel free to resteem it and also leave any thoughts on what speaks against the success of SMT if you want to help even more.
I thought I was the only one noticing this issues. I wrote this post earlier https://steemit.com/smt/@rexusmo/smart-media-tokens-questions-in-the-loop
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You ask some very good questions. I too am interested what the so called expert have to say, and how this will impact everyone! In the future no one will want to go to work, everyone can just stay home and play on their computers all day!
Hi, nice post! Though I have a different opinion (I personally think SMTs will actually succeed and be useful), as outlined in my post here I'm glad to see other views as well.
As for the STEEM blockchain being able to hold all of this data, it's well known that STEEM is one of the fastest and largest blockchains out there— it regularly processes more data than Bitcoin or Ethereum, and puts out a new block every 3 seconds (as opposed to Bitcoin's 10 minute blocks).
I'm sure @steemit and @ned have it all figured out as well, and I believe STEEM will be able to cope with the extra data load. Additionally, I think SMTs actually helps and streamlines the ICO process, making it less "blurry" and setting out harder guidelines for ICOs.
Since most or all of the code is open-source for SMTs, I believe, anyone or any authority can check to make sure the tokens aren't scam.
Given the $1 price tag associated with creating your own SMT, I'm sure we will see a bunch of poorly created or hastily slapped together tokens. However, the point of the technology is to allow anyone to create their own token. From there, some will succeed and others will fail; it's just natural selection.
@mooncryption
We are looking at the possibility of having millions of people creating their own tokens. It will be messy if it reaches that stage.
You're right, that will be pretty messy, and will possibly happen. The point is that, the technology behind SMTs will empower just a few of those tokens to succeed above the others. And those few tokens will probably spark changes in the industry.
Though huge batches of low-quality authors might create their own tokens for their websites, high-volume and high-quality creators like The New York Times might even adopt this SMT technology to create a token such as "NYT" to reward their viewers with.
The bottom line is that the technology now exists for things like this to occur. It's up to us, and up to authors like us across the industry to figure out what to do with it.
Though I think the idea is comprise, myself I have an amazing idea on what to do with it and it not about creating contents.
Here I have written the possible questions people will be asking.
https://steemit.com/smt/@rexusmo/smart-media-tokens-questions-in-the-loop
Thank you for that well worked out comment. Do you have any ideas what could speak against the success of SMTs? For me it is also very hard to come up with possible problems which SMT will be facing, but it could well be that we are missing something here.
I'm actually not too sure! I think @ned and the @steemit team have thought of mostly everything.
I think the initial adoption curve could be pretty slow. I'm sure for the low $1 price many ICOs and coins will spring up from eager Steemit users, as you said, but not all of them will actually be useful to the community.
Otherwise, I think pretty soon some amazing SMTs could come up. SMTs can let bigger companies and publications like The New York Times monetize literally every interaction on their site. If SMTs are used widely on the Internet, it could spark the death of advertisements and paywalls.
I think SMTs will be very good for STEEM and for the average internet user as well!
From a social experiment , monetizing the comments or user engagement may back fire. People are overlooking social behavior !! How people interact would be different and it may or may not be good.. Some earlier experiments done by yelp ,with the same model actually failed. People were repulsed by "payment" part of it.
People were repulsed by "payment" part of it. I think that it a very good point. What is the psychological aspect of this? Thank you for that comment!
Yep, it's hard not to find a good conclusion on SMTs :)
good to see someone looking at the other side of the story. I'm still reserving judgement myself . But its good to see some level headed judgement on why it might fail rather than getting carried away and looking on it too positively.
Thanks for sharing
You're right, question it all.
For example, what's to stop a media site to issue their own tokens if they want to, bypassing SMT all together.
Another point, if these were truly beneficial, wouldn't Facebook have had their own a long time ago?
Upvoted
The only part i think is good was a way to make a comment system that will pay publishers
There are over 5000 different Tokens created on the waves Blockchain , and its very successfull as they have a mark for verifyed Tokens. maybe that could help smt too.
Good post. It not wrong to question everything - In fact is the best idea there is!
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Good post! Questions like yours should be ask :)
hehehe maybe but look what happens with Bitshares, Ethereum or Waves where you can create your own tokens. Markets will tell the last word and this is a real "free market" not what we have now full of govs regulations.... Waves also at the same price as will be on Steemit, just 1 coin. They are good examples of the technology implemented but of course, the quantity of users are more on Steemit than in the other platforms as far as I know. Could be more messy ;)
About the data grow, as far as I understood tokens will do not have their own blockchain, they will not produce any block so the data will be a bit more but not so much as without them ...
Disclaimer: I am not a developer, I just read the White Paper and understand a bit about all this.
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