That escalated quickly

I am glad that @theycallmedan is backing @spaminator, but it is of course a stop-gap measure and is subject to limitation as he is just one account, other methods have to be found to deal/ or not deal with this kind of behavior:

I say "not deal" as maybe it might be fine to have it bloat the chain under certain conditions, as after all, it is no different on YouTube or Instagram. I think the problem with it on Steem so far has been that it tends to get some rewards out of the pool and even though it is rarely much, there is a sense of injustice that it gets anything at all. However, if there were Smart Media Tokens in play, the job of policing would be entirely up to the owners of the token.

Last night I mentioned that in a new chain, it might make sense to severely limit the size of the inflation pool as well as the distribution channels. For a couple of years now I have predicted this will happen and STEEM would be the investment token that stabilizes the chain, but I didn't think it would be forced by a hostile takeover, though that was also mentioned when I talked a couple years ago about limiting witness votes. What this would mean is that STEEM would no longer be distributed on content at all.

I believe that even if SMTs had been introduced, they would have struggled to get uptake and compete with STEEM as people would be reluctant to move over and "start again" on a new token. Yet, with the introduction of a new chain, this is precisely what we all would have to do anyway. This would be an opportunity to separate the use case and make Steem the utility token that empowers the usage of SMTs as the earners.

With communities driven by SMTs, the community management would be in the hands of a private groups, owned and centralized experiences. It would be up to the owners how they choose to handle aspects that are going to never be eradicated in a place that offers earning, like SPAM. In some cases, it might be great to obliterate or mute the accounts from having access to the SMT reward pool, in other cases it might be suitable to let thespam ride - for example, with an application like @appics, where if it does well, there will be millions of users and spam control will be near impossible. Yet, there can be other experiences that are less interaction focused and much more content orientated, similar to newspapers, where content is consumed without expecting reward to engage with it.

The rewards can be there of course, because that is what SMTs are for, but the value of the token is dependent on the demand and use case of it. The problem with having STEEM do all, is that it is going to create a great deal of conflict in who has access. For example, the SCT community token has value - but only because they were using it as a way to buy votes in STEEM from the pool. Without access to the STEEM pool, would the token have had value at all? Or, would the people who hold STEEM in that community be willing to trade it for the SCT Steem-Engine token? Unlikely, because what had value was the STEEM token and the SCT token had no utility other than a marker for getting Steem votes. Remove this kind of voting access to the Steem inflation pool, and this type of behavior changes.

It is quite obvious that STEEM is seen as having value, whereas a lot of the other tokens are not held in the same regard when Compared to Steem. But, if SMTs were freely available through interaction while STEEM was only available going forward through purchase off exchanges, interest or witness payments, that would change. One of the brilliant things about STEEM has been the ability to get in without having to buy in, but there has to be a limit on that as it is a stabilization token for the chain. As I have written abut several times before, eventually, the tap has to close and it has to in order for people to start seeing the secondary tokens as attractive, and therefore valuable.

A new blockchain can set itself up similarly to Steem keeping those who have worked or bought themselves in invested, but limiting the distribution of new coins issued to those who have held so far. With voting for access to the pool out of the equation, things like STEEM delegations would be largely unnecessary, as long as Resource Credit delegation was available. This would mean that for example, if the inflation pool was 1 million token a year, a split could be made where 30% went to witnesses with 15% going to the core, and 15% going down the list much further. 20% could go to the SPS for development and 50% could be paid in stake-relative interest to holders to encourage stability and give access to resource credits to issue to applications.

This issuance of RC delegation could be the way for STEEM holders to gather a few SMTs for themselves by backing projects, so that content creators will be able to use and earn SMTs freely on the applications themselves, depending on use case. This would make for a dynamic environment with a background of investors who are using Steem to invest into the projects they think will do well, as they want the token value of the SMTs they support to go up too.

This would obviously be a pretty dramatic change for Steem blockchain users, but it has to be remembered, that they wouldn't be Steem blockchain users, they would be XXXXX blockchain users. The Steem blockchain could continue to run much like it is while sister chains experiments with radically different economic models that might very well empower the users more than the current ecosystem. There is essentially no limit on the digital real estate available and there are limitless configurations possible.

Like I said in a comment earlier, I am hopeful for Steem, but a blockchain can't run on hope alone. While there is still a relatively good chance that the current challenges will be overcome, it is also worth thinking about other options and while SMTs are a brilliant edition, we have to think about their limitations. Technically, they can do a lot, but the limitation of being compared to STEEM is a large hurdle and perhaps to give them space to breathe and take root, the best thing to do is to remove STEEM from the earning model equation.

This scares a lot of people on Steem, but if we consider that the goal is to onboard millions of users, the ones to arrive might not be scared at all, as the application layers above the infrastructure become their home, in the same way that Reddit users don't need to know about HTTP protocols to share and consume memes.

I don't know if these precise things are what need to be changed or adapted for a new chain, but a new chain gives the room to improve upon what needs to be fixed, without having the same socially-charged response and resistance to change. Rather than having to spend two or three years talking about the changes, a few clear points can be shifted very quickly and as it is an opt-in ecosystem, users now and in the future can make their decision if they want to participate. Or not.

It is hard to know where it will all lead, but at the very least, thinking about change, rather than just reacting to change, has more value for me.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]