Recently, there was a intellectual discussions (post1, post2) between witness @lukestokes and community organizer @davemccoy. It came out that Steemit is reference platform for STEEM blockchain. STINC is building a scalable blockchain for next 100M users, currently they are not focusing on the maladies of Steemit front-end. It also means the retention rate in Steemit is dropping and new signups are easily discouraged due to lack of information and incentives.
It looks like STINC's priority is building scalable blockchain for future SMTs. As one of my previous posts, I also discussed how maladies of Steemit will not go away when SMT will be released if STEEM still can be earned by blogging in Steemit.
One of the solutions is to launch a new SMT for Steemit and airdrop on STEEM holders. Then reduce the STEEM production for interests and witness reward. STEEM's demand will rise on the bandwidth purchased by the SMTs. It is proved many times, scarcity (decreasing supply) of a coin, drives its price. Then many blogging sites with SMTs can experiment their reward policy such as stake weighted votes (i.e similar to now) or single person single vote.
There can be SMTs for every single social interactions from streaming, gaming, bloging, vlogging etc. In this way, STEEM can tokenize the whole Internet.
It is unclear how in future STEEM will be rewarded as it is done today. One of the idea is that a content can be rewarded with either STEEM or SMT with stake weight. In some DApps, reward could be only SMTs and another one multiple SMT along with STEEM.
However, making a perfect social media with everyone happy that involves money is more than rocket science. It needs lots of trial and errors, SMTs will help accelerates these experiments.
Therefore, at some stage, with few killer and happy SMTs, STEEM blockchain can bring in 10s of millions of users. Then, demand for STEEM can skyrocket too. Best time to invest STEEM is before any big upgrades and in a bear trend like "blood in the street".
It is obvious that STINC has prioritized developments of key components such as scalable appbase, hivemind and SMTs rather than fixing trending page, voting abuses and bidbot farming. For which average and new users are in jeoperdy and discouraged. However, if future SMT based DApps addresses these issues to make satisfied users then STEEM can only grow.
Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions.
Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.
Thanks for reading.
@riseofth
Cryptominer since 2013, occasional trader and tech blogger