Of late, I dedicated a bit of attention to what things are going to be like after the next hard fork. I believe that is a total game changer for Hive. For that reason, I am going to put together a multi-post series detailing how I see a few things panning out.
Hard Fork 23 is slated to implement SMTs and a Resource Credit Pool. According to the rough timeline laid out, we should see the coding completed in the next few weeks, thus enabling a testnet to be set up. Since it is such a large upgrade, extensive testing is going to be required. This means we are probably looking at 90 days on that end. The rough estimate for this fork is the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2 in 2020.
SMTs are a powerful mechanism that can alter a great deal of how we interact on the Internet. Since I wrote a post about it yesterday, I won't repeat the basic points.
What I do want to focus upon is the shift that will take place in terms of user approach. I sense that the SMT protocol is going to reverse the process from what we see now.
At present, we are trying to attract people to Hive. A lot of the discussion is how do we go about doing that. Most of us have embarked upon the individual approach telling friends and family about it. Unfortunately, for most, the results were varied at best. Few came to check it out and, those that did, made a post or two before leaving.
This is a process we see happen repeatedly. Personally, I had it take place in the last few weeks. I signed an ex co-worker up, he posted a couple times and stopped. Isn't there something about leading a horse to water?
I do not believe we will see this process end after the next hard fork. However, it will be complimented by a different method.
Instead of trying to bring people to Hive, SMTs are going to bring Hive to people.
We will not try to attract them to what is taking place here. Instead, the ecosystem will be brought to where they are already transacting.
Many sites have their own "pools of fish". The size of the pond will vary but they are already full. Their user base is established, thus Hive just needs to tap into that. SMTs allow for that.
Once they are released, the protocol simply needs to be marketed to the website owners. If one of them agrees, the entire user base for the site is instantly going to be exposed to Hive. Having a token that is on the Hive blockchain will provide the pathway for transacting. Thus, even though they might not be aware they are on Hive, those people will know they can get rewarded for interacting with that website.
That is a much faster method than us trying to get a few people here and there.
Naturally, we have no idea, at this point, what type of sites are going to sign up. The adoption of cryptocurrency, thus far, is a bit slow. There are many reasons for that, with one of the biggest, in my opinion, being the complexity of the entire process. Ease of use is something we must work at.
SMTs is going to provide this to a degree. With a turnkey system, site owners will be able to establish a monetary system for their sites in a few minutes. We saw this same thing happen with Wordpress and website creation. Before that, knowledge of Java was required. That platform made websites turnkey, enabling anyone to set one up.
This analogy is also why I believe Hive will fade into the background. Few are aware that roughly 1/3 the websites out there are Wordpress sites. To be honest, nobody really cares about that either. The user is only concerned with the utility of the site, not where it is hosted, who designed it, or anything else with the technical parameters.
It will be the same with this. I doubt few are going to care which blockchain their information is being posted to. Nor are they going to give much attention to what else is taking place. The masses tend to focus upon what they want and that is it. A few might venture out which is fine but, most of us, visit the same sites daily while using a handful of applications.
Once difference I do see for the end user is that, if SMTs are successful, one could be getting tokens from a few different sites and have them all housed in the same wallet. That is one advantage to having the same protocol spreading throughout many different websites.
The key is instant access to some rather large numbers. A few examples are:
SeekingAlpha 15M MAU
Techcrunch 10M MAU
Marketwatch 16M MAU
None of these sites are considered household names. They are rather specific in their focus although large for their fields. However, when compared to some of the top sites out there, especially social media ones, this is a drop in the bucket.
Nevertheless, there are hundreds of thousands of opportunities out there for SMTs. Just think about the impact of a handful of sites with a few millions users each. Considering the number of transactions presently, that would cause a huge jump.
Of course, this does not mean the present applications on here stop their progress. The hard fork also addresses the on-boarding issue in a way I feel could be successful. Thus, the marketing efforts of the individual applications could pay bigger dividends if they are able to get more users signed up.
At some point, for huge success to ensue, we need to see bigger numbers. The Internet is all about traffic and numbers. Thus far, Hive is rather slow although that is a trend all across blockchain.
This is why SMTs have so much potential. By taking this approach, we are not disrupting what the user does each day. He or she can keep all bookmarks in place. The only difference is the activity done on a site that implements SMTs will be eligible for reward. That will happen automatically as upvotes are placed.
Essentially, we are no longer only trying to bring fish into the Hive pond. Instead, we are going to throw Hive into other people's ponds where fish are already present. SMTs are the technology that will allow the joining together of the different ponds.
Ultimately, these sites end up being a feeder system into Hive. While most will never venture past what they are presently doing, a certain percentage will investigate things. Here again, we see a simple numbers game in action. Even it is only 1% or 2%, when dealing with a pool of 100M people, that turns into a significant number.
If all goes well, as the tentacles of Hive spread across the Internet, people will keep bumping into it. Having a single log in for multiple sites is something that people are not accustomed to. When they start to realize their username and key works for many sites, I think the light bulb will start going off. Word will begin to spread about the possibility of getting rewarded on many different sites.
And, that point, if reached, is the best marketing in the world.
SMTs might be the "killer app" everyone is looking for.
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