One of the reasons I am so excited about the tokenization of Steem and especially the rewarding contributors with SMTs rather than with Steem itself is that it allows for a much broader creation of applications. While pretty much any type of content can be served by the Steem Blockchain, the reward and distribution model ties the hands of the applications also.

How I see the future is tat the Steem ecosystem is going to be the backbone of a very diverse set of applications that enable users to participate in Blockchain and crypto in a vast array of ways. The larger this ecosystem becomes and the wider the use case and niche range of applications, the more encapsulating it is because it is able to offer more people an experience that suits their needs.

This means that rather than Steem being the experience, it starts to resemble something like an application store where there is a large pool for users to pick and choose from and if handled well, There will be SMTs that offer interoperability across applications at a token level while leveraging the blockchain at a practical level. As the ecosystem grows, it becomes more ingrained into people's lives without there needing to be cross over of every experience.

While this already happens in some ways, there is still a great deal of visibility between uses and there are limited options in how they are managed and how things like abuse are handled. A great deal of the abuse on Steem is because people want to earn Steem and this means that with such a diverse user base and wants, it is much harder to combat. Yes, tweaks can and should be made but through the distributed tokenization of applications, it allows operators a much freer hand to moderate and, a narrow set of behaviors to process.

But abuse is not the only benefit of course because with a great deal more applications, the ability of leaving the whole ecosystem becomes much harder as there is increased chance that people are using more than one application and therefore more chance they want to maintain usage of one or more, even while they drop usage of another. Much like one doesn't have to throw away a device every time an application is dropped - I have been on Android for a very long time across devices but the applications I use have shifted a fair bit over time.

The beauty of Steem over a purely niche Blockchain is that one doesn't have to throw away what has been built in the past even if moving applications. This is part of the reason I don't get the pomp and carnival of those who announce they are "leaving Steem" - because, why?? They can very happily stay on Steem and change their behavior of how they use and consume from it to a way that fits their mindset at the time. If you are tired of blogging move to @appics, no longer want to play @Steemmonsters rent your cards out and blog on @tasteem about the restaurants you visit.

It seems quite strange to me that people make such a fuss about leaving something like Steem when there really is nothing to leave. Of course, there is the value of the currency involved for most of them which is likely the more important aspect but, one can still powerdown everything without leaving Steem. After all, this is the blockchain, once joined and creating, there really is no true leaving as the past is always written immutably into the chain.

For me, the ecosystem of Steem is a beautiful place and the more it grows in uses the better it gets, as more people have the chance to find something they enjoy or love about the space. While those on steem might not fully appreciate tokenization yet as it is of lower value for the most part than steem itself, new user to the SMT-powered applications will not know about Steem in their experience and will improve their value in time.

As the entire industry grows and splinters into a mass of communities and niches as well as large scale products and services, there is going to be a huge range of tokens and chains getting utilized concurrently by an individual user and just like now, there will be millions of apps that both compete against each other for attention and innovate to expand the ecosystem to become even more inclusive.

It is funny when I hear people that give up on Steem and powerdown for greener pastures because in time they are likely to be back, although it will be on an SMT application powered by all the people who stayed. Who knows, perhaps they will be utilizing an self-help app to get over their fear of uncertainty that rewards them when they don't quit. Maybe not :D

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]