Cross-Blockchain competition and SMTs
The technical aspects of blockchain technology and many other tech are not my strong point but,I do find it interesting to consider some possibilities and writing about them generally attracts some discussion that helps me build a better picture.There are many interesting aspects that SMTs will bring and many of them will likely factor in held SP as a way to distribute or, encourage usage of new projects.
For example, I use @Steemhunt although I have only hunted one product. One of the reasons I use it is that I am able to earn HUNT tokens by curating hunts through their interface. The other reason is that I have found that their development team is one of the most active out of the projects and they are continually working for their future. This in my opinion is a good sign for SMTs and the future of the Steem blockchain.
However, this raises some interesting questions for the future too as this puts added pressure on Steem in other ways and, the projects built on SMTs as they are going to be able to use their ability to distribute tokens as leverage to attract users to their projects. At the moment, this means that @Steemhunt is effectively pulling people away from curating other content. This is smart and, it is going to get increasingly popular with SMTs arriving.
Considering that one is still able to earn curation returns on the voting on these projects, with the added coins coming in, at what point does the return make delegating to bidbots unprofitable? Some of the SMTs are going to potentially be very big projects and the coins they issue now could skyrocket in value under the right conditions to well and truly outpace the earnings from vote selling. It is a new part of the Steem game, a new way to play perhaps. As more and more projects use this technique to attract users and additional multipliers for project delegators, it might pull pull users back from bidbots somewhat.
There is another factor I think that could have a large effect on this also and that is through Airdrops. At the moment, the airdrops that work on SP are great but, they could be used to affect the delegations also. For example, What would happen if an airdrop for SP holders excluded the amounts that are delegated to bidbots? For example, if a person has 10,000 SP and 9000 is delegated to a bidbot, the airdrop will only factor the 1000.
Will this affect delegations? Will it push up the price of delegation purchases or make people consider the future value of some SMTs over the immediate returns from bidbots? It is hard to say how people will act but it will definitely add new layers of complication and how to play the game for many people.
There is another factor that I do not understand yet, find very interesting and that is cross-chain competition. Using @Steemhunt as an example again, from what I understand, their first issue is of an ERC token and then they will move over to SMTs when they are finally rolled out. I do not know how this works but, if it is possible to do in this case, it is possible for other projects already on ERC to move over to SMTs. What kind of pressure and competition does this put on blockchains and their speed and scalability? I don't really know.
It means that projects are going to be able to shop around for the blockchain that offers them the most potential for the success of their investments. This of course includes the possibilities of their user base to access the project. If cryptokitties shut down Ethereum, what happens when there are hundreds of such projects and hundreds of millions of users interested in access?
There is a lot of competition between blockchains now but it is going to likely segment further and some blockchains will specialize for a market segment while others will be general catch-alls. What will make or break any of them though is their ability to deliver to both their developers and their users to provide an infrastructure that can run smoothly and unseen beneath the markets.
When it comes to the average holder of Steem Power, it is going to get interesting as more and more opportunities arise to earn from it by supporting through it. Like any currency, Steem Power is just a tool and where it is used is going to greatly affect what that tool is able to build, what kind of return it can get. Currently, the incentive is in vote selling but with SMTs and their ability to incentivize in different ways, that could change and those who sell their votes are actually missing out on returns.
It is hard to say exactly how all of this will play out but with competition across blockchains, competition amongst SMTs and other blockchain projects, air drop variation, coin issuance variation, incentives to curate here instead of there and all kinds of other factors, the potential is strong that what people worry about now may not be such a factor later on but, new problems will always arise.
What is easy to see though is that what we know today is going to fundamentally shift in many unpredictable ways that are going to affect all of us, developer or user. For Steem Power holders, there are going to likely be some very lucrative ways to earn and, some very surprising ways to use the Steem Power toolset as well as a great deal of competition not only from other chains but, internal projects. Innovation is going to speed up incredibly.
As I said at the start, my technical knowledge isn't great but, what are your thoughts on some of these points?
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
So far the airdrops have not deducted for delegations out, and I don’t see what incentive a future one would have to do that. They pretty much have been preserving the steemit power structures.
I wish they didn’t, since the SMTs represent a chance for a fresh start with those most committed to a certain project having the most power on that platform. But the dominant thought seems to be that early steemit adopters and big investors are the ones to preserve power for.
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They haven't yet because that is the way the game is currently played but, it doesn't mean it will always play the same. Depending on the community they are looking to form, could affect the type of distribution they have. If they want active users, they may choose to exclude passive earners, who knows.
The SMTs are able to apply their own rules at their layers and some are going to experiment quite heavily I predict. At the moment though, they are playing by Steem rules alone.
Steem has a combination of three factors going for it: a large existing user base, scalability and a history of over two years of use to work out the kinks.
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Do you think it is possible that it will attract some ERC projects in?
Actually there are currently several platforms similar to Steem(it) being launched/in the pipeline who still are banking on ERC-20 as their network.
Let’s see how scalability works for them and how long before they consider a SMT instead, both thanks to already existing userbase and plug-and-play mechanics.
Certainly some but what Steem lacks is smart contracts. It has smart contracts specifically for token creation but no virtual machine of any kind. EOS is the general decentralized computing platform. Steem is perfectly fine for storing digital assets as JSON data that don't do much like SteemMonsters. Steem occupies a specific niche: media content. That's by no means small at all. :)
This is what I was saying about chains for market segments and catchalls. The content sector is a large part of the internet obviously. I also wonder if large enterprises will utilise a number of chains to fit their diverse needs rather than just one with multipurpose.
Hmm...I think that would depend on the details such as the cost of app development, security, stability or price and so on. What's great about Steem is the fact that it is battle-tested and already has a large community. There are over a million accounts. As soon as some media outlet announces monetization by Steem they will already have an existing additional user base in existing Steem users who will not have to learn all the ins and outs of Steem from scratch.
None. This is not dissimilar from for example WhaleShares using Bitshares. The only reason why tehre’s the ERC-20 step is to speed up the whole process, while waiting for SMTs.
In that sense, the ERC-20 token will function the same way as EOS was an ETH-based token until the EOS blockchain allowed token-claims (or effectively launched).
When thinking about SMTs, in the hopefully not to distant future, tokenized SMTs will need to pay out and have the option to pay out in three different tokens. With one,
vests, being a compulsory payment method.So there is no competition as such. Not in the sense that suddenly things will be converted to an ERC-20 token everyone will vie for. The ERC-20 is a smart contract, a guarantee, for the Sh users and a method for Sh to continue its pace and release the next stage of its platform soon’ish, without being impeded by the release date of the SMT platform.
Thanks mate, that explains some things a bit better. As you know, this is past the boundaries of my knowledge ore than a few steps :)
There will be competition. But that competition will be because more actively voting vests every day.
While, of course, Steemhunt’s airdrop is a marketing and growth hack... the ERC-20 token itself is irrelevant in the competition element.
Yet, right now the question is whether that actually hurts the pool. The retention is reasonable but that doesn’t seem to result in sustained daily upvote value currently.
Am not yet sure if the competition between blockchain technologies is particularly healthy, as it may slow down their chances of mainstreaming faster. However, it certainly is creating avenues for even more spectacular technologies into the fold
I think the competition will help them mainstream as they will innovate for the market instead of to satisfy their technical desires.
I hadn't thought of the angle if SP is delegated out to bots and would have an effect on airdrops etc. I think there is going to be a huge learning curve coming up for most which will be a good thing. What was good in the past may not be good in the future it seems.
I think at least on Steem, there are going to be a rang of approaches to segment the market and gain traction for their products.
Thanks a lot, this is very informative. There are humans in this platform pretending to provide information and click on-baiting customers. But this put up honestly packs a punch with all this information. well played sir.
I couldnt take part in the airdrop as I am new here and dont have enough SP, but Steemhunt looks really like a good project with a very promising future.
Yes, it requires powering something up.
I am already in ...... thank you so much for good information
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glad you are in. Don't get hurt.
Lol
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