We are on the edge of a massive explosion within the Steem ecosystem. Wealth is going to be weaving its way throughout every facet of the community. This is a process that is started yet will be taken to a new level.
For most, the idea of Steem wealth is confined to STEEM. Even SBD is something few understand and even less care about. We concentrate our attention on Steem Power.
This is natural since it was the only token that had any value on here. While this is spreading out and we see the distribution filtering throughout the community, the pace is still rather slow. Over time, we are seeing massive shifts yet they are not noticeable enough in the short-term to excite people.
As we see more applications being built, we are fortunate enough to watch the foundation of crypto-economics in play. These DApps are working hard at providing products that people will want to use. If this happens, we could see the value of the tokens created be worth some money.
While it is easy to focus upon the Steem Whales and a few large Orcas, the next wave will not be with those people. Some are users or delegated to some of these applications, but not all. Most are being utilized by those who have smaller Steem accounts. They are the ones amassing decent amounts of the other tokens.
What is taking place mirrors @dan's idea of decentralization with EOS. I was going through some material and came across something he said which resonated with me. The idea of EOS is that while there are the Witnesses for the EOS blockchain, each fork is DPOS with its own set of Witnesses. This means the 21 are joined by 21 others on a second chain, who see 21 more come on the third chain, etc... Since the EOS code is used throughout, the decentralization is spreading rapidly since the chain is being forked all over the place.
The same concept can be applied to Steem. With the introduction of SCOT and the anticipated SMT, we are going to see active token creation throughout the entire ecosytem. If tokens has the same properties as STEEM, they are in fact spreading wealth to everyone who is actively involved with them.
At this stage, it will not be a small handful of people involved in all of them.
I fully believe there will comes a time when few people will care about Steem. It is not something that will resonate with them because it will be seen for what it is: a network. This is going to be the case for all blockchains. They are going to disappear in the background. What is going to dominate the minds of people will be the applications used.
Think about it this way. Are you concerned which company owns the mobile tower you are using when you are driving around talking on your phone? You have your carrier who could have agreements with other carriers for tower or bandwidth space. Is that of concern to you? Of course not. As long as the service works, that is your main focus.
It will be the same thing. Utilizing an application is not going to have any bearing what network it is located upon. Few are going to care what the ledger looks like. As long as the application works and the tokens earned are there, that is all that is important.
This is what Steem is evolving into. SMTs (or the present SCOT) provide a market value on tokens other than STEEM. This is where people who are using these applications are earning. It is building the value of their holdings albeit slowly at this point. There is obviously a liquidity problem on most of the new tokens since there are so few people involved. This will not always be the case.
Early adopters always benefit. There were Steem Whales and a number of large Orcas who were here for most of the three years. Almost all of us came at a later date and are progressing with smaller accounts than them.
@steemhunt has its early adopters. Not only did many delegate to them, they ran generous bounty programs early which put a large number of HUNT in people's account. Many of these people doing the bounty were not Steem Whales. Hence we see smaller Steem accounts with larger HUNT. In other words, a Steem Red Fish or Minnow might be a HUNT Dolphin or Orca (if there are such things).
My point is there is going to be a lot more wealth than just STEEM. Obviously, not all tokens are going to be successful in terms of the monetary value. There are going to be a lot that are just used by a small group of people providing a utility to the application. The flip side is there will be a lot that could have value. Here is where we see those outside the small group of Steem Whales entering the picture.
Here is a prime example. I took a snapshot of the payouts by @actifit for the top usage for yesterday.
Notice the names on there. Do you see some of the well-known Steem Whales and Orcas? They are not the ones who spent the time using the application to the point where they are top earners. These are smaller Steem accounts who are not only earning some SP through their efforts, but getting the top payouts in AFIT. This will be to their benefit if the AFIT token achieves some decent usage and goes up in value.
In the same article, I noticed their SP delegation crossed 660,000. They have a model set up where there is only a certain number of AFIT paid out for delegation. This was capped since they started. The difference is I can remember when there were less than 60K delegation. This means one was getting 10 times the number of AFIT in the early days for the same amount delegated. Again, early adopter/supporter benefits.
These examples show how things are starting to work. It is easy to focus solely upon STEEM yet there is not where the sole value is going to lie down the road.
This morning I saw some posts about the Weed token or something to do with Cannabis. This is not something I am into nor do I know much about it. What I do know is there will most likely be a large amount of people on here who do get involved in those projects. Those who amass the Weed token (or whatever it is called) could end up doing very well.
And it is something that many larger accounts will not be involved in.
We are getting close to the time when we can focus on things other than STEEM. While it is still the primary token, and will be for some time, there are a lot of other paths for people to pursue. With the establishments of exchanges for both SCOT and SMTs (when released), individuals are going to be able to swap their tokens for other assets of value. If nothing else, it puts a price on what they already have.
Hopefully this provides some insight into how I see things revealing themselves in the not-too-distant future. Tokens other than STEEM that have an established value that can be traded on an open market will certainly attract some attention.
I feel we are within a few months of seeing that happen.
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