Landscape of the Ecosystem Is Adapting Ahead of SMTs Release

At the beginning of Steem (and Steemit), things were pretty straight-forward. You wrote something, if people appreciated it, they upvoted and you (and them, as curators), received rewards from the rewards pool.

Rewards, when they came, were very enticing, and early adopters feel the difference between then and now, even though they had the time to build massive followings in the mean time.

After a while, the ecosystem began to be populated with specialized apps, for videos, live stream, images, and many other niches. Some attracted loyal users. But all share from the same pool of rewards.

It became clear that as more active users come aboard while the reward pool remains relatively unchanged, it will become harder and harder to earn a good amount of Steem as an honest content creator or curator.

Somewhere during that time, bidbots raised in influence, as a way to speed up a not-so-early-adopter growth. Enough people took the opportunity, otherwise bidbots would not have spread so much. As always, some of the people who uses them are well-intended, others are not, but I'm not going to pursue this idea further, you'll understand why.

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As the details on SMTs become more concrete, we see a shift of interest towards them. There are at least two projects I know of so far which declared their intention to launch their own SMT, even before they know the full details about smart media tokens:

• fundition.io, with Heart Token
• steemhunt, also with a planned own SMT, once they are released

I think there are more projects on the pipeline or which consider adding their own SMT.

Yesterday, witnesses @aggroed and @yabapmatt launched the alpha version of a "collectible trading card game with RPG elements". This game may be a good candidate to have its own SMT later on, if it's a success.

Besides the switch from the classic Steem/SBD rewards to particular SMTs, such new projects have a side-effect. They have the power to shift large amounts of Steem from where it was parked to their direction, as Steemhunt has proven, with its airdrop for delegation proposal.

It is also a possible inflection time, when other projects (including bidbots) will probably lose some of their delegations.

It is in moments like this when I almost envy the early adopter whales/orcas, and their possibility to choose and delegate to different projects as Steem goes to the next level. Soon after, I remember many of them invested in Steem when there were only a few here, and also stuck around when Steem - the crypto - plunged to a few cents after being over $4 in value. So they deserve to reap the rewards now!

So, the landscape of the ecosystem is just beginning to change. We will see many more of them soon and in rapid succession. We should also be prepared to adapt, when the time comes. In which way, I don't know yet.