I've been pondering for a while about the Steem Media Token, and its implications. It took me a while to understand what it is and the amount of innovation that it can potentially bring.
Steem Media Token (SMT) is a way for anyone to create a token on Steem, with minimal costs and programming knowledge. It costs less than $1 to create your own SMT and it could be used for many things, including starting your own ICO or to issue out to people on media platforms. The best part of SMT is that it's powered by the Steem network, which we know is much faster and expensive than the Ethereum Network. This means these tokens are idea for small interactions, such as integrating into a blog or even a forum. Unlike Ethereum though, a lot of the programming instructions are already done, so integrating SMT will be super easy for new users. The disadvantage is that it's not as versatile as Ethereum when it comes to coding and it won't be as mature. In tech there are always tradeoffs. This means SMT will be great for community projects, and perfect for niche sites.
One application that I can think of is usage in Blogs such as my own website, boxmining.com. I can potentially integrate a chat system similar to that of steem and reward users for contributions. These tokens will then have their own value - it will be like having my own Steemit on my website!
The white paper and development guide can be found on https://smt.steem.io. I'm still going through the basics and I might even try to learn how to program and make my own token!
Original Post: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/announcing-smart-media-tokens-smts
Currently, it is scheduled to launch "soon in 2018". Hope that is early in the spring! I can't wait
