Dear steemians,
Right now, I am musing on the topic of SMTs like so many others. It is great to see all the angles that people are taking on the topic. All we got right now is speculation since we don't have the thing working in front of us. But I wanted to talk about something that we can consider right now and even plan for...namely:
Like so many other products, the launch of something can have an incredible impact on it's success. Launching an SMT will be cheap ($1 SBD) but that doesn't mean that it should be treated as such.
Here are the factors that should be considered before launching an SMT
The #1 reason why people hold on to any token is the expectation of future value. As long as the hope is there, some people will hold on to it.
For people to have expectation of future value, you must sell a vision of what this token is about.
Where there is no vision, the people perish - Proverb 29:18
So what kind of vision a token can have? Well now, we have countless of example of what is possible. We've seen tokens like dogecoin and kekcoin being mostly based on their "meme" power.
There is also the community based token such as the one of the Let's Talk Bitcoin Show the LTBCoin that is earned via participation on their website.
Owning a certain amount of those coins can unlock special features of websites or content but fundamentally, these are not the tokens that people hold on to like grimdeath.
The token that people hold on to the most are the one attached to technology and utility. A Platform such as ZAPPL can have their own token where they focus on growing a large userbase that use their token and distribute it massively.
Since the SMTs will have the choice of to set to what degree SteemPower will affect rewards, there is the possibility to create truly independent silos of distribution and influence. I think, for example, that if ZAPPL rewards were independent from STEEMPOWER there would be a "gold rush" to be positioned as power player on their platform, invest and join early. Giving a new chance to those people who weren't there at the beginning of steemit.com
So what will be the economics of the token? Will there be a short supply with minimum inflation? Will there be small supply and massive inflation?
Knowing what is the best setting for your particular use case is very important and that's not something you can easily change once that is set.
STEEM solves the biggest problem of all when it comes to distributing a token. ICOs and mining and sharedrops were the most common form of distribution scheme that we had before. But now, we have a much more powerful way to distribute tokens: upvotes!
Of course, you can combine multiple of those strategy simultaneously for increase impact.
An ICO helps a lot since you have time to build expectation, build a community, build an expectation of it's price on the market while the hype is growing. You can even build a steem community (community feature coming soon) while they are waiting for the launch.
People like to see real people working on a project. This increase the trust that people have in you carrying the project at hand.
Have a website, FAQ and all the bells and whistle people expect when they are looking at a project.
There are a lot of ways an SMT could be launched and usecases that are outside of my imagination right now. If you think that I've missed anything, please make sure to let me know in the comment below how you would launch an SMT yourself.
