I’ve been reading what I can about Smart Media Tokens here on Steemit.
Of course with so many new projects, ICO crowd sales and general rumours and FUD going around the blockchain, I can’t help but be a little curious about it all.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the hard work and dedication the teams who are funding ICO’s and creating promising platforms are putting in, but to be honest, I feel pretty comfortable hanging around here on this platform and seeing where it goes, especially if we see Steemit head into alpha stage and see it’s current applications utilise SMT’s.
I’d love to hear your opinions about this topic as a whole, leave me some comments below or reach out to me over on Discord (tim.clarke#7280).
This video isn’t meant to discourage or give investment advice, I’m just trying to educate myself more on these new developments and projects and I’m totally open for discussion and having my mind changed, if there is information I have missed or exciting developments to come, let’s get talking!
See you next time!
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
Well I'm not a developer, but I am part of the Steemit team, so I'll try to help out where I can. I'll start with the question of longer payout periods. The short answer is yes, SMTs do allow for payouts after 7 days. That's really important because we understand that this is an important issue for application developers. But what must be remembered is that the way we make our decisions is a balance between what developers want and what is SECURE. Part of security is having a limited set of features, and a limited set of customizable parameters which can be guaranteed to be secure and ungameable, but that can be combined in sufficient ways to enable the maximum number of use cases.
In other words, it's not about having every feature everyone wants, it's about having exactly enough secure features that can be mixed-and-matched to meet everyone's needs. The 7 day payout period is in place for very important game theoretical reasons. For example, should a post that is 10 years old be rewarded the same as a post that is 1 minute old? What algorithm should be used to determine the difference? Will it be perceived as fair? Will it be vulnerable to attack? Should someone who cashed out their Steem Power 5 years ago still be entitled to earn SMTs when people upvote their content?
Every decision, especially every change to a secure system, risks introducing new attack vectors and incurs technical debt. That's why, as of now, the 7 day pay out window for decentralized token distribution (Proof of Brain) will remain in place. However, there are a number of ways that developers can leverage SMTs to get around this limitation that do not create issues for the Steem blockchain. One would be simply through the user interface. If an app developer wants their users to continue earning SMTs after 7 days, all they have to do is re-post the content automatically every 7 days. Their SMT, their app, there's no reason they have to penalize re-posted content or even indicate to the end user that the content is being re-posted. From the user's perspective they would see content posted a year ago, even if the app had technically "re-posted" it yesterday.
Another way SMTs could be used to extend the payout window (and I think this is a really interesting example of a more broadly applicable concept) is that the SMT creator can specify at launch an account (or accounts) which will receive a percentage of the token emissions (newly created tokens). So say you are an SMT creator and you wanted to allocate 2% of the yearly token inflation to "perpetual rewards." When setting up your SMT you will input the account that will receive that percentage of the token inflation. You will also be able to specify whether you would like to seed that account with an initial supply of tokens. So for example, you could put 1,000,000 tokens in the account and allocate 2% of the token inflation to that account as well. So the account has an initial supply of tokens and a constant source of funding. Now all you have to do is build a bot that distributes the tokens from that account to content creators when their old content receives upvotes.
I suppose you could even copy exactly the Proof of Brain algorithm and use that to power your bot. That would be a pretty secure way of quickly implementing a solution. The bot would then leverage our proven algorithm to leverage the voters vested SMT to calculate the number of tokens from this "second rewards pool" which should be distributed based on the voter's vote strength. From there, if you find the account is being drained too quickly, too slowly, or other, you could tweak the algorithm accordingly instead of reinventing the wheel.
Here's why this is more broadly applicable. This payout algorithm is totally under the SMTs creator's control and can be changed at will. They can still host the code on the blockchain so that it is transparent, but the blockchain wouldn't actually be doing the computation. If it was, changing it (for example if a vulnerability were exposed) would be as difficult as changing a blockchain :). We make blockchain level decisions that ensure the sustainability and scalability of the entire ecosystem. That means that our priorities will always be different than those of the individual application developer for good reason. App developers need to be concerned with the scalability and sustainability of their ecosystem, and need to be confident that they don't have to worry about the scalability and sustainability of the ecosystem that their app exists within.
This is one of Steem's most undervalued propositions. It's not about "everything being on the blockchain" it's about "the right stuff" being on the blockchain. Developers don't want us trying to solve every problem on the blockchain, they want a scalable and secure blockchain capable of powering real applications that actual people use. I've seen firsthand how right Steve Jobs was when he said that it's not about the products you choose to launch, it's about the products you choose NOT to launch. Steem is still years ahead of the competition and the devs have chosen to say "no" to many things people thought they wanted. It wasn't because they didn't want to offer those things. It's because they are very good at understanding the costs, the risks, and the utility. These are really the discussions that are constantly going on within the team. How much do people want it? Are those people being reasonable? How much value will it add to Steem? How much does it increase the size of the attack surface? Can Steem already be used to offer this functionality with just a modicum of creativity? Developers should find the best protocols, with the best teams, who are capable of making the right decisions as proven by the ultimate arbiter: time. Then give them a certain amount of leeway with respect to their decision making process (after all they did pick the protocol for a reason), while feeling free to engage in respectful debate.
So that's my answer to the question of the 7 day payout and how SMTs can enable developers to implement perpetual rewards on Steem. Interesting note: they could implement the first solution now if they wanted to :)
Hope that helps!
Andrew Levine
Content Director, Steemit
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time to give me such an awesome response. In general, I’m really interested in the whole SMT development and what it potentially means in terms of sustaining this whole ecosystem as a collective.
I totally get where you are coming from in terms of perpetual rewards, especially how it could potentially be abused in some cases if these solutions are neglected.
In general, I’m excited to see them develop and what it will mean for Steemit as a whole!
One thing I really admire about the work that’s being done here is how openly discussed these descions are, for example when a platform has a new update, everyone is kept in the know as to why new changes were made and why other things weren’t implemented. As a daily user, it’s refreshing to see that new ideas are being considered and that opinions are listened to. But on the other hand, it’s just as refreshing when something isn’t implemented, especially if it would be a risky move or detrimental to the end goal.
Thank you so much for sharing your insight, it’s given me more than enough information to ponder over and by far, my most productive comment to date. I appreciate the hard work you all do in this place and can’t wait to see what the future brings.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you! How can I connect with you directly to discuss SMTs and Steemit's roadmap?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
See you
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I want to create an SMT this year, I am trying to learn all I can.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Congratulations @tim.clarke! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPDownvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit