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Tokenizing The Web With SMTs — The Light at The End of the Steem Tunnel?

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@khaleelkazi
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YouTube link to the SMT presentation at Steemfest

I’ve been on Steem for over two and a half years now and I remember reading about SMTs shortly after I joined. SMTs were one of the main reasons why I decided to go all-in on Steem and invest a lot of time and money into carving out a place for myself on this blockchain.

I read the whitepaper for SMTs and the vision immediately stuck with me… It all tied together — the blockchain of opportunity. Tokenize the web. A hub for entrepreneurs. These statements resonated deeply with my core beliefs and goals in my own life.

Whenever I talked about Steem and would speculate on the future of this blockchain, I would bring up SMTs right away. That was the future of Steem. Blogging on Steemit.com was just a stepping stone to that vision. It’s merely a showcase for the power of proof of brain and a community that rallies around a central token that is used to reward positive actions within the platform.

Months went by and then years went by. I always thought SMTs were “around the corner” because that’s how Ned and crew continually said. Eventually, I gave up on the idea of having SMTs “soon”.. They became an elusive idea of the future. Something that will hopefully happen some day, but not something that is guaranteed to happen.

By this time, Splinterlands came out. Other platforms on Steem also came to fruition and were doing well. Platforms like Steemhunt, DTube and others. The vision for tokenizing the web seemed to fade away in the background a little as we saw people innovate outside of the core Steemit team. These developments allowed me to continually stay bullish on the Steem blockchain. Without the hard work of all these separate communities and teams, I probably never would have stayed here.

Imagine a Steem blockchain where it was only Steemit.com and the Steemit, Inc. team. No other teams. No other communities. I doubt any of us would have stuck around for the past 2 years to endure this bear market with so few developments.

When Steem-Engine launched, the vision for tokenizing the web was reignited. The Steem community rallied around the idea of creating a token. Eventually, tribes were tied in and the vision became even clearer — this is what we had been waiting for. The ability to easily create a token and build a community around it on Steem.

It’s been a long wait, but now we finally see what the SMT process will look like. Steemit, Inc. showcased the Minimum Viable Product at Steemfest 4 and I am impressed with what they have done.

The process looks relatively similar to what we’ve used on Steem-Engine. The core difference is that these tokens will be directly on the blockchain rather than run on a second-layer, third-party solution. This brings a sort of “professionalism” to the token that will be launched as SMTs.

I don’t think SMTs will replace Steem-Engine tokens. Not in the slightest. I’ve always said that they will be two different products with two different sets of use cases and scenarios. Some tokens will always be better as an SMT and others will always be better as an SE token.

Here’s another thing —> competition is good.

I think one of the main reasons why we are even seeing SMTs right now is the fact that Steem-Engine was created and it lit a fire under the ass of Steemit, Inc. to rollout SMTs and take the project seriously.

I honestly have no idea what Steemit, Inc. was working on for the past few years. They’ve put out some cool things since Eli took the reins from Ned — i.e. ads, MIRA, Hivemind — but what the hell was happening before that?

Anyways, the past doesn’t matter at this point. Steemit has finally made tangible progress on SMTs that we can all see and (soon) use on the testnet.

I’m feeling even more bullish on Steem as I continue to watch the livestreams. I never was bearish on this blockchain, but it’s always nice to feel some tangibility to reinforce your beliefs. SMTs will, in my opinion, bring a lot of old Steem users back to the blockchain in search of opportunities.

Steem has had some great press in the past and we have had a lot of people come here and spend some time on this blockchain before dipping out when they thought that nothing was happening and the price of STEEM was tanking because the project was going under. The layoff press last year definitely didn’t help the cause.

I saw somewhere that a lot of people had received an email alert about SMTs that Eli and crew sent out. I think this was hugely important and way understated across the blockchain and on other social channels. Steemit, Inc. needs to make more noise about the SMT testnet when it goes live. I hope they can get some devs back to Steem to at least check it out and dream up some potential opportunities for themselves.

SMTs could save the Steem user base. Simply because the idea of SMTs lives in the minds of people all over the world. Is it tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Who knows.

When people who have heard of SMTs in the past can see, feel and use SMTs in the present, I think it will reignite the fire of Steem just like Steem-Engine did for many of us who have stuck around. Communities may also have a positive impact on all of this.

People want to see progress. They don’t want to hear about it an elusive vision of the future for years on end. If you continually promise and underdeliver, people will get disappointed and leave. Now I believe that Steemit, Inc. is delivering on past promises and if we make waves about it on Twitter, the email lists that Steemit has gathered and other places, we can drive a lot of the old Steem users into the NewSteem world of SE tokens, thriving projects, SMTs, communities and all the other beautiful things that have sprung up on the Steem blockchain since they last saw it.