RE: Maybe I will launch an SMT - Some random thoughts.

Here is the key question that I cannot answer for you, but which is critical to trying to figure out if this is useful:

What do you want your notional SMT to do that STEEM does not or cannot?

Because remember, all of the SMTs are just wrappers around buckets of STEEM, in a real sense. They may have slightly different metadata associated with them, they may have individual payout curves and distribution curves, but they are all effectively STEEM transactions with all of the limitations thereof.

Any sort of use of SMTs are going to hinge on there being some sort of value that the SMT is intended to represent, and if you don't have the value or don't understand what that value should be, there is absolutely no need for an SMT. Just as there is really no need for Tribes as implemented by Steem Engine; the majority of useful things that Tribes do are not related to actually having an associated token but instead having a dedicated website which is specifically devoted to presenting content of a particular type. That is to say, they could exist perfectly well in the absence of Tribe tokens, using STEEM in exactly the same way. (And in an interesting way, in the same way that I've said that the value of STEEM as a token is a representation of the value of the content posted to the Steem blockchain over the last week, the value of Tribe tokens represents the value of the content from the Steem blockchain that they are presenting through a singular interface.)

So you're coming at this from the wrong side. Don't think about it from the SMT side. That is thinking about money before you have a service to sell. That is thinking about money before you think about value. That is thinking about putting numbers on things before you have things to put numbers on.

The economic model for steem is not the most successful model in the world. It’s extremely innovative and has some fantastic pros, but it also has some cons too. It's hard to see how steem can increase in value when there is always more money going out than coming in. And if you don’t want to power up, there is little else you can do with steem other than selling it. There are only a handful of products and services that you can buy with steem and so there is not economic recycle of liquid steem. There is no steem economy. But then steem is not a payment token.

SMTs are not going to change this. In fact, they are going to double down on the fact that SMTs are not a payment token and they won't actually represent any economy that doesn't already exist.

There is a serious misconception here, though. Steem can increase in value when there is more "money going out than coming in" if there is more value being created within the record-keeping process that it is accounting for that people want to acquire. Much like any other economy, you can have an export-focused economy as long as people continue to want the product you're exploring. Unfortunately for STEEM, the only thing that it facilitates exporting is its own self as a token, but since it is not destroyed in the transaction, someone always ends up with more STEEM whenever a transaction occurs.

Ultimately, STEEM can never "go out." It can only change hands. Someone has to have it to sell it, and someone has to want it to buy.

Putting this in the context of in game currencies is an interesting one, because you managed to sidestep the one thing that's really important about in game currencies – and that's that they exist to be traded for something that someone wants. They do not exist in and of themselves to be possessed. They exist – well, honestly, as a legal cut out to try and convince local legal authorities that the underlying system isn't just gambling because gambling is a controlled activity in most areas, and nothing else. People buy in game currency in order to get things in the game, not to hold the currency. Games give people in game currency so that they can have a little, but not enough to buy the things that they want in the game so that they are incentivized to give real money to the game platform in exchange for in game currency to immediately turn around and give back in order to get something in the game.

This is the absolute opposite way around from how most people involved in cryptocommodities want to think about what's actually going on. They want to think that the token itself is the point. They are wrong. It's the reason that I refer to them as cryptocommodities and not as the more common cryptocurrencides, because a currency exists not to be held but to be traded for something you really want. A commodity exists to be held, to gamble on changing value, and then exchanged for something you can actually use – like a currency. A real currency.

So don't think about SMTs. They are a distraction from what you actually need to think about in order to make anything succeed.

Think about what you need to sell. What is the thing you want to exchange for a currency that someone else possesses? What is its value? Why should someone want it? Why should they give you anything for it? Why does it have a value?

Once you know that, then you have to decide whether you want to limit how people can give you currencies in exchange for your thing of value. If all you take for it is SMTs, you're going to have a hard time of it because no one will have them, no one will want to buy specific ones in order to give them to you, and you won't be able to do anything with them, either. After all, to do something with them you need to be able to sell them in exchange for something you want or to someone who wants them more than you.

Figure out what someone else wants, figure out why they are willing to give you money for it, and then you make it possible.

It's worth pointing out at this point that one of the best things about OpenBazaar is that they allow someone to set up a digital storefront and take one of a pretty broad selection of cryptocommodities in exchange for their goods and services. That's because if you have something of actual value, you don't care what someone wants to give you in exchange for it as long as you can exchange what they give you for something you want. That is the whole point of underlying currency exchange. That is how you exchange value.

SMTs have nothing to do with that and that's a real problem with the overall architecture.