Smart Media Tokens are coming
Now that the code for HF21 is complete, the Steemit blockchain team has shifted their focus entirely to completing Steemit’s Smart Media Tokens protocol (or “SMTs”).
What are SMTs?
For those who don’t know, Smart Media Tokens are a token-launching protocol similar to ERC20s on Ethereum, but with all the state-of-the-properties enabled by the Steem blockchain, like three-second fee-less transfers. SMTs will allow anyone to launch their own STEEM-like token with customizable features including Founders Tokens, Token Emission Rates, Proof-of-Brain, ICO Smart Contracts, and more. You can find more information as well as the SMT Whitepaper by heading over to https://smt.steem.com/
When SMT?
We are not yet ready to release a specific timeline on SMTs, because we want to hear from more community developers before we finalize the features which will be added to the initial version of SMTs. Based on our initial outreach, the demand for SMTs is still extremely high. Despite the delay, no other blockchain project has managed to deliver the feature set that SMTs will have, because no other project has the Steem blockchain as a foundation.
One of the many reasons that we chose to develop SMTs was our belief that, as an application-specific blockchain protocol, Steem was uniquely suited to hosting powerful tokens with unparalleled features. The fact that no other protocol has yet to meet this demand validates this view.
Current SMT Work
Because Smart Media Tokens are already delayed, we are doing everything we can to simplify the protocol while still giving developers all the features they need from a decentralized token protocol with Proof-of-Brain. One example of such changes is our decision to remove “Hidden Caps” from the ICO code.
Hidden Caps
There was a time when projects would offer tokens for sale without disclosing the amount of contributions required for a successful launch. With the benefit of hindsight, it has become clear that such ICOs were mainly performed by untrustworthy actors. After consulting with community developers, we have decided to remove this feature. Not only will removing hidden caps eliminate a surprising degree of complexity, and by extension engineering work, but it will also help ensure that more SMTs are legitimate. That’s why one of our top priorities is removing code relating to these hidden caps, which will simplify the process of completing SMTs and enable us to deliver the protocol on an acceptable timeline.
We have identified a number of places where the protocol can be simplified without reducing its functionality, and will continue to look for any opportunity to accelerate the release of SMTs while maintaining their potency.
Thank You
We understand that the wait for Smart Media Tokens has been a long one and we appreciate those users and developers who have stuck with Steem. Fortunately, that wait was not entirely in vain. The addition of Resource Credits to Steem in HF20 and the release of MIRA were critical to ensuring that the Steem blockchain was sufficiently scalable to support the dramatic increase in activity we expect to see once developers and businesses begin launching SMTs. While we wish SMTs hadn't been delayed, Steem is now in a much better position to add Smart Media Tokens. We do apologize for the delay, and hope you can bear with us just a little bit longer!
Future Updates
We will continue to release updates through @steemitblog as we make progress on SMTs and will provide a timeline for their release as soon as we are able, so be sure to give us a follow!
Stay tuned and Steem On.
The Steemit Team
https://steemit.com/steem/@themarkymark/curation-reverse-auction-changing-from-15-minutes-to-1-minute-in-hard-fork-21
Hi steemit, is there any reason why this change
This is a major change in steem economics, why it was not mentioned in any of the hf21 blog posts and just straight up added to the code?
Steemit Inc. actually advised against making this change in HF21, or any other changes for that matter (unless they are required bug fixes). However, the witnesses took a vote and almost unanimously came to the conclusion of adjusting it to one minute. It’s a topic that has been discussed for quite some time. The last minute effort to get this added in was mostly led by @thecryptodrive
Thank you for clarification.
@cardboard it had been discussed by witnesses and stakeholders many times and every time no one really closed the deal and said "hey let's settle on x number and go for it", I had previously called for this to be included in this HF but nothing had happened yet as just mentioned, so I took the bull by the horns and got consensus witnesses to agree on a common figure and presented it to @justinw who had said to me that if witnesses could agree on a figue in a very short window, Steemit will be happy to add it. You can see my post decision public announcement here.
Now they will be robbed by bots.
While I can understand people being concerned about code being added at a late time with little discussion. (I see that as a security risk) I certainly think it is a good and solid change that supports a real end user who maybe doesn't want to understand the complicated thing that is Steem.
Read a post, like it? Go ahead and upvote and don't try to play the 15 minute game.
Personally I don't think it favors the bots, any more or less. It favors those who want to use the site in some sort of natural way.
I just remember a big farking kerfluffle when they changed it to 15 minutes; it seems kind of odd that it gets tossed in like a bill in congress that tacks on 20 unrelated things (maybe so people don't notice and get all up in arms?). This HF is tipping the balance of curation rewards (which doesn't effect us minnows very much on the curation end; will bite us on the author end), AND giving bots a better way to earn curation rewards.
I don't pretend to understand the technical side of things, but it all seems like a giant middle finger to anyone who can't buy themselves a whale ranking. The big draw of Steem to us lowly plebs is that you can earn your way up and not have to buy in like Bitcoin, and this is making that harder.
I mean, I'm not going anywhere, and maybe it'll turn out OK somehow, and I'm worrying over nothing. I'm not trying to be all hyperbolic and "Steem is ruined!!1!!11!!!1!" or whatever, it just has that feeling of when the company you work for tells you that they are reorganizing but don't worry, everything is fine, we're a family, and then three months later half the workforce is laid off.
Minnows, and let's face it, unless you can buy in from the get-go, you're going to be a plankton/minnow for a while (I'll be here two years in September), aren't really concerned with the 15 minute game because our curation rewards are pennies. It's spending an awful lot of energy to, what - earn an extra half a penny? Maybe some folks have that kind of dedication, but I doubt most of us do, let alone the real end users, or mass adoption-imagined masses. It's saving us from an effort that would be a waste of time for us to engage in in the first place.
I have hope that SMTs will make things better for us unwashed masses, but I don't have hope about the new split or one minute window. I don't hang out with witnesses and stakeholders; I don't know where they ostensibly have these conversations or if they are public; I am not a cryptographer. I'm just that regular user that got really excited at the possibilities of blockchain once I began to learn about it and has read a couple of books on the subject and reads a little crypto news (which is probably more interest than most of the masses everyone expects to come over some day from other social media). And to me, this feels like being a cog in a corporation - you don't have any real stake (just your ability to pay your rent, which is huge to you, but jack shit to the CEO), you don't have any real voice, the board/CEO/bosses don't care about you at all, you just kind of have to accept whatever gets handed down from on high and make the best of it. And me stating this feeling here is as much an exercise in futility as speaking up during a company-wide meeting: the decisions have already been made, the feelings of the little people might get lip service but that's about it.
So I guess, I don't know, I'm just venting. But I haven't spoken to a single Steem peasant who is happy about HF21 at all. They're all worried about how they're going to pay the rent. Me too.
Hey but you earned 18 STUs for this comment!
We do too!! Check out our project
What is the motivation of this change? From the user's perspective, it seems illogical.
It makes bot / automated votes > users organic votes. No user can compete with bots and put vote early enough to get good curation reward.
Currently, the best reward is when we vote, say, between 5 and 10 minutes. I don't think it is currently a big deal with users voting too early then and "losing" curation reward.
I've read post from forum and this sentence below is definitely not true:
They may lose, they may gain. It all depends. It depends on sum of rshares before our vote, sum of rshares of our vote, time of vote and total sum of rshares after payout. But for most users in most cases the best time to vote is between 5-10. And the smaller the vote the more profitable is to vote earlier. On the other hand whales should vote at the end of the curation window.
To give a better picture, it may look like this.
@jacekw @cardboard currently the UX is terrible for users who know about the 15 mins reverse auction window, leaves a heavy cognitive load and people second guessing if they should wait to vote and often even forget to come back and vote. It also isn’t conducive to short form content and the flow of discussion. There is a small tradeoff for that with bots being able to vote sooner, but overall it means the user gets more curation and helps get the content out of superlinear to linear faster. Also there is so much content now on Steem that the bots will serve to vote on established authors and helping retain them while human users can scout for new or first time users and will overall enhance curation.
It’d still be nice to have more warning/transparency so users who aren’t witnesses can give some input.
Of all the changes regarding HF21 this is the only one that makes sense to me.
Thanks for looping me in.
I know why they did this, it is so they an blank out our comment immediately!
So much salt in the comments. haha
But for reals I'm looking forward to it and I may be skeptical as well... but I am also very much routing for you guys!
I'd love to see them happen.
QUESTIONS:
It's pretty annoying especially seeing it coming from the worst accounts on the platform.
I believe Steem is the only true governance chain(some of it's forks have this governance system as well), we have a vote and a say what code we want ran in an indirect way. What a beautiful system.
if you think about it parliament has more people in it than 50 ... but i steer clear from politics , i havent really been following because i have no power over it but so far from what i heard HF21 seems to be an elitist move ... i hope it doesnt push too much of the bulk away ... wait and see until implementation ... it started out as a circlejerk for people with a certain level of income and ...
i dont really dare voice total opinion i just picked up bits here and there im too busy on my own stuff and i dont have a say in it anyway
and : it looks like its gonna push more power toward, its like a simulation of life, only this is whalestreet, not wallstreet ...
i will hold my opinion for the realz unti i see what it actually does ...
The creator of a SMT basically "insta-mining" some tokens for themselves.
blah blah blah
Well said, Sir.
Thank you sir!
Looool
Welcome to Steemit!
my feeling exactly!
Please do it step by step.
I think first step should be
and this might be enough as the first step and much better than more delay for more features.
Since SMT is very complicated, this way is also the right way in terms of testing.
Thanks for the feedback! We're definitely going to release SMTs in "versions." We don't think the SMT protocol will ever be "complete." It will continue to be updated as developers discover new token functionalities that could add value to their apps and businesses. The focus is entirely on keeping things as simple as possible, so that we can release SMTs as soon as possible.
We know you can't code SMT's. How about addressing the falling STEEM ranking due to the liquidity problem. STEEM is now ranked 72 and STEEM price is falling due to the lack of exchanges supporting STEEM.
u huh, something that would benefit EVERYONE , not just those who already sit on a pile ... @socky, you've been campaigning for like since the dawn of time now, right ... deaf mans ears ... i quit making proposals pretty fast ... i left steemchat after four hours after i joined ... that's not my crowd lol
but it's still the ichiban blockchainsystem ... the rest is just "normals" life with the 1 vs 99% ... business as usual
Lol
Lol well said
WYSIWYG editor is still too difficult to implement (steemSTEM, stemQ, steemHunt, Engrave already have it, but never mind it's too complicated)
What makes you think that? I've been following the progress of GitHub, and they are certainly capable of programming it: there's just a lot to program.
They even had an era of prosperity with huge hiring spree and spending with no release of SMTs as promised.
We already know they are "coming" theyve been "coming for years now? what about a steemit mobile app? @sneak promised that on STAGE actually lol
We have https://steem-engine.com sorry no one cares about SMTs because all the big projects waiting for SMTs already made a Steem Engine token, and it doenst automatically = success.... its humbled a lot of people... SMTs are not going to do anything more than Steem ENgine tokens have done so why not make some announcements about things we NEED like ONBOARDING?
Go help @steem.ninja and their https://invite.steem.ninja project which needs delegation and RC mana from accounts like @steem and @steemit and you know @ned you can get ned to plug in his RC mana to https://steeminvite.com and generate millions of new accounts a year for free instantly if we had a took, to automate that.... we need onboarding solutions.... the community is stuck trying to strugle to onboard, when steemit inc should be doing this, its a serious problem.....
We need free accounts - amen! No.1 priority
And we have them. This was included in hf20
When I say free, I mean:
Not true. We have what is called blockchain subsidized account creation and you need what? 5K Sp? 4k? 6k? to create ONE account every 5 days.... real helpful.... sorry but need has to spend his own money to buy new accounts no way around it. unless next hardfork will lower the requirements, but ned and steemit inc were SUPPOSED to be paying for a solution to get rid of duplicates, a SIMPLE way is using what they USED rto use before giving up, reddit accounts with certain karma, or twitter or facebook accounts with certain activity, and yeah that can be abused, but its harder, theres no perfect solution BUT IS NOT OUR fucking jobs @g2g its steemit incs jobs lol typical weirdo response telling teh end user to do the work of steemit inc
There is a reason why you have lost so much money and steem is 40 cents.. dont try to tell me you hadnt wished you had stayed in BTC this whole time instead of steem.... but if @ned had focused on new users things could be different,m who KNOWS how many new investors and developers we could have gotten .... if ned would have spent a few million dollars a year onboarding... who KNOWS how many Millions he could have made....... steem is not in a vacuum
Yall' know what would be better? If it didn't cost so much fucking RC's to create an account in the first place. At this pace, even with the entirety of Stinc's SP ie RC's creating free accounts 24/7/365 they wouldn't be able to onboard millions of new users we are hoping to onboard once the floodgates open.
Typical Steemit logic :D
Analogy, thirsty man in Sahara. It's fine, we have invented water pipes, so you can drink once you are at home :D
this is true! so that the added value steem we need new active users
They already gave us fast free accounts once. :)
memehub is a way to help onboard through memes. We plan to offer free steem acct creation for memers after using our site a certain amount. got a lot in the works for memes on steem
i almost thought this was spam the way you wrote this be careful lol just start with something more natural if i were you :D like "HEY that reminds me, MEMHUB!" lol
will u be the follow up to dmania ?
kk, ill take that into acct. Our system will be far better than the dmania platform and without the scammer part lol
oh come on dmania never scammed anyone, it had some script that was infected by a lot of similar software, he didnt put that in to make a few dollars or whatever,
Im not sure if this is sarcasm or not?
Partiko is the best app you can dream of...
I'll believe it when I see it!
problem solved
Thanks for notifying us. That user has been blocked and reported and the comments deleted.
Obvious scam, but people will fall for it.
#sbi-skip
Clever? WTF is going to fall for that?
'Please send us X amount of money and we'll send you twice as much back'... ?
Posted using Partiko Android
Sadly people are dumb enough to fall for it...
That is a scam, never send! FB should seize that account!!!
What is the cost of creating custom SMT? Any spam protection?
Posted using Partiko iOS
Last time there were talks about it I heard 10 sbd being thrown around but that may have changed.
Thats... incredibly cheap.
How about shifting part of that focus for doing some contingency planning for a change? If HF21 backfires:
Seriously, telling us you are no longer focusing on HF21 isn't exactly something we need to be hearing from you guys at this point in time. We need to be hearing about quantified success, quantified failure, kill switches, contingency plans, and other such things that could create some confidence that we aren't heading head first into an other HF20 disaster this time around, but now with only a fraction of the old staff.
This will be my number one qualifying question for all SPS proposals (if HF21 goes through).
If I were a consensus witness, it would be my number one qualifying question for all version changes and hard forks. It should be every consensus witnesses number one qualifying question in order to do their jobs - secure the blockchain.
On a completely unrelated note... have you thought about creating/joining a witness team?
Did you see any end user testing for HF21?
So far all articles are speculating, not a single test result has been shown.
This is very scary.
HF20 business as usual.
We should test for a while before implementation . Testing doesn't always expose all the bugs and even if it does sometimes that commutation between tester and steemit breaks down , that is what happened with hf20 . Timcliff pointed out the bugs i believe pre fork .
No one pointed anything out pre hf20.
It was just a disaster.
And this time.. No one seems to do any end user test cases. None of the high paid witnesses.
Correct me, if you know of any test results.
Yes, very much this ^
Sure, the state-of-(f)art method of XXI century, it's called feelings.
If you feel it's right, it must be right, otherwise, you are a nazi.
They'll notice...and then promptly make a post declaring it a huge success, while the entire house is on fire.
Pourquoi ne pas rejoindre l'initiative de Steem-Engine qui fonctionne déjà depuis plusieurs mois. Vous gagneriez un temps précieux et répondriez à votre volonté de mettre en avant les meilleurs développeurs qui travaillent autour de l'écosystème Steem.
Because... Jealousy, ego, and stuff?