SMTs and the Emergence of New Steem Business Models

in #smts7 years ago

Towards a Smarter Web


Last month, we began discussing the many features of the Steem blockchain that could be focused on for multiple applications. Though not immediately visible and accessible in Steemit's current interface, we will see new companies and SMTs that take advantage of and creatively utilize the blockchain's features – beneficiary rewards, staking, feeless transfers, adjusted curation, post timing, etc. - to establish new business models and expand the influence of Steem.

We want to emphasize that these are not just quirks or slight variations of what Steemit is now. Instead, revealing and mix-matching a number of key components could help establish wildly different models that motivate distinct types of content. In today's post, we'll look at two upcoming SMTs and round out the discussion of creatively using the Steem blockchain for distinct professions and problems.

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VICE and Paid Viewership


One previously unthinkable aspect of content consumption is the idea of rewarding the viewer. Ultimately with any form of media – blogs, articles, videos, tweets, pictures, advertisement, and art – the audience is what validates and maintains the equity of that specific creative form. The audience drives the economy of production. And yet, the audience isn't rewarded for being a part of that market demand, despite the legwork a consumer may do in purchasing the media, sharing it with friends and colleagues, and other ways of maintaining that value.

Of course, Steemit and its media derivatives such as DSound and Dtube subvert this assumption with curation rewards, implicitly redistributing value to those who provide their engagement and support. Curation values might be up to the SMT creators to play with the idea of rewarding the consumer how much and for what.

That's where the upcoming token VICE takes this feature and creates a whole new marketplace for... ahem... creative video content. You will be paid to watch pornography. No matter what you think about the subject material, the concept that you receive a piece of the ultimate value a video would produce is astounding and flips the typical YouTube model on its head. No 3rd parties and no add-on monetization. Value would be distributed as per the 'equity' of its audience.

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This sets a precedent for other video forms such as advertisements (as we see with the Basic Attention Token), news, and so much more. Being rewarded with token payouts is one very clear benefit of the Steem blockchain, but creativity in the curation systems opens up whole new avenues to incentivize particular forms of business.

It makes sense to empower your audience directly with micropayments that connect them to the content they watch and support. The value creation and distribution of the Steem blockchain could come to the forefront with VICE.

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Bob's Repair


At first glance, Bob’s Repair seems like a Steemit model applied to a specific forum and topic, but this SMT is highly focused on one aspect offered – the reputation score.

Forums typically have embedded rating systems or at least a counter with total number of posts, date joined, etc. but they generally lack a rigorous, non-centralized ways to verify ratings and reviews. They can typically be taken advantage of and the final number or reputation is rarely faithful to the account.

This is especially pertinent to a manual service that has historically not been so integrated in digital databases. How do you know if your plumber is reputable? Or if your locksmith is trustworthy? These professions have operate most on interpretive word-of-mouth but now can be verified and supported by a blockchain network.

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This empowers both the raters and the rated. Fraud or incomplete work can be flagged. More helpful advice and community engagement can be upvoted. Steem proof-of-stake protocol could be revolutionary for domains that have had little to do with the digital era and relied mostly on elbow-grease and the Yellow Pages. Again, by taking advantage of and elaborating on an existing functionality of the Steem blockchain has allowed Bob to create a new ecosystem for feedback and posts.

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More to Come


This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the depth that will be made available with the release of Smart Media Tokens. Virtually everything online is in some way a creative or informative expression and by simply tweaking the functionality of Steem’s blockchain, we as a community could begin to rethink traditional industries.

We’ll be sure to do more analyses like this as SMTs come out of the woodwork and we’re excited to be a part of the movement!


Explore Smart Media Tokens and the whitepaper, here.


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Neither the VICE token nor Bob's Repair are planning to use SMTs. I have talked with the head of the VICE token project and he confirmed that they will be forking the Steem blockchain code and running their own separate chain and not using Steem or SMTs in any way.

They are doing an airdrop of tokens to Steem token holders however, so any of us who held STEEM back at the end of December should receive some free VICE tokens when they launch.

Bob's Repair is a bit more complicated. If I remember correctly they are going to be primarily using an ERC-20 token and some Ethereum smart contracts for their primary business but will post user reviews on the Steem blockchain.

In one of the posts on SteemIt.com initially announcing the project I asked if they were going to use an SMT and someone who was associated with the project - might have been @virtualgrowth - don't remember offhand, said they were not planning on creating an SMT.

Nevertheless, they say imitation is the best form of flattery, so while the VICE token project may have the technical ability to start their own chain, many other projects may not and will hopefully opt to use an SMT instead (when/if they are actually released - i think that was probably a big reason behind VICE choosing to make their own fork).

Interesting, Vice wants to start their own Steem blockchain...

Get paid to watch Porn man will never get any more work done ever again lol.. looking forward to all the new things that will be developed on steem blockchain... the internet is changing people.

Get paid to watch porn sounds like an interesting idea. It will get people's attention until they realize whatever you get TINY compared to the inflation needed to sustain this reward system

HR MANAGER: Tell me about yourself.

ME: Screw that! I watch porn for a living. You're fired!

Nice profile pic! Just sayan.

vegeta yes now all steemians are officially involved in the adult industry

Whether they want to or not lol... they can always give me their stake if they don't want it.

There's only so much porn you can watch at a time. An industry will bloom to develop tools to give the impression that you are watching porn continuously to earn the tokens.

doesnt matter thats not how steem works man, on steem do people get paid just from getting views? NO we arent selling ads, people who earn vicepowet get to upvote content and produce more vic tokens to pay the contest producers like dtube

Another token to power up and HODL.

Doesn't matter you and the content producer gets paid, so it's a win-win.

Agree. Blockchain is the future in every part of the industry :D

I can get free bitcoin.

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They are doing an airdrop of tokens to Steem token holders however, so any of us who held STEEM back at the end of December should receive some free VICE tokens when they launch.

Most of us don't have liquid STEEM anyway. Will the air drop includes those who only hold Steem Power?

This is all the information there is about the airdrop:

Vice Industry Token Inc. will airdrop 400,000,000 (10%) of the genesis tokens to
STEEM token holders as of block number 18,500,000 on the STEEM Blockchain. The
airdrop to STEEM holders will be distributed by January 1, 2021, and possibly earlier,
in a manner and time period of Vice Industry Token Inc’s choosing.

So I don't know, and it seems like we wouldn't even get them for 3 years for some reason...

Oh shit! A lot of things can happen by that time. Blockchains are everywhere and nowhere. Nevertheless, I love the idea of ditching our employer(s) to become a full-time porn consumer.

Since you are reading this anyway, I'd like to take this chance maybe you could support my proposal to put every sexual activity on a blockchain. That way we could reduce heartaches brought by cheating in a relationship.

How do Steemit users hold VICE tokens?

they will be airdropped so i guess you will wait for vice wallet and login with your steem active or owner key to redeem vice tokens like bitcoin and bitcoin cash

As long as they don't give those tokens to 3 year old then I'm happy :)

Does this go for steem power ? now does an airdrop work with steem I am sure if its here on steemits wallet its not going to be supported?

There's really not much information about it. This is what it says in the whitepaper:

Vice Industry Token Inc. will airdrop 400,000,000 (10%) of the genesis tokens to
STEEM token holders as of block number 18,500,000 on the STEEM Blockchain. The
airdrop to STEEM holders will be distributed by January 1, 2021, and possibly earlier,
in a manner and time period of Vice Industry Token Inc’s choosing.

No idea why we won't get our airdrop for 3 years? lol. Anyway like I said I think in the end it's all good press for Steem.

If they would have used SMTs it would have been fantastic... now there is just a new fork... diverting attention... but as said... I think the no-update-situation means that there are massive problems and we better should not expect SMTs anytime soon.... :(

Thanks for clarifying this @yabapmatt. It seems unclear what is going to come out the other end with both of these and we'll update this @sndbox article once we get more info.

Thanks, i'm guessing you're somehow involved with @sndbox? Any way I could get in touch with you? I saw you guys did an event at Temple in Philadelphia recently and I'm involved in the local Philadelphia Steem group, we have meetups once a month, and would love to maybe work together to grow the platform in this area. Let me know!

Oh that sounds great! Yes, I'm part of the team and feel free to message me on Steemit.chat. I'll let you know the next time we might arrange a social meetup there with the class (likely later this spring or early summer).

upvoted. nice post

Thanks for the info... When I read the whitepaper I was not sure either if they just had used the wrong term "forking" instead of "SMTing"...
Appics has removed all the references to SMTs as well... As no updates are coming through, I assume the best thing is to forget about SMTs altogether.. It seems like they are stuck and so all the other projects drop or never intend to use SMTs anymore...

Nice right up

Will VICE be using the Steem blockchain? There seems to be some confusion around this project. Last I heard they were not using it any longer. I have not had time to dig into this further as I am traveling right now. @sndbox

Hi @thejohalfiles - to give you some background, I work full time in the blockchain sector, specifically with ICOs.

VICE published this article a few hours ago talking about how they will be using an ERC20 token for the ICO.

I imagine that they will move to an SMT, once they are launched. ERC20 tokens often have network congestion issues, due to bloating on Ethereum's network. I would think that VICE are ready for ICO, so decided to get it started right away by using and ERC20 token, but when they want to scale they will move to SMTs, so that users can benefit from fast transactions, the reward pool, and all the other positives of SMTs. Otherwise, VICE would have to build a whole rewards pool smart contract with all of SMT's consensus mechanisms in order to reward users for watching etc., that would also interact with IPFS - I don't even know if such complexities are possible with solidity, as I don't know the language too well.

I hope this helps, I would really appreciate your feedback on my latest project!

Edit - see @sndbox's reply, VICE have forked Steemit's code.

But does forking steems code mean that they will use an SMT? If they get all the benefits of the graphene architecture, why use an SMT?

Great question @thejohalfiles, the VICE whitepaper still highlights Steem as a basis for utilizing the rep-scores. However, we've heard conflicting reports and are also seeking more information about this.

Comment EDIT - it looks as if VICE will be forking the Steem code to provide this functionality. See their tweet below:

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so basically @viceindustry won't be using the same Steem blockchain we're using, and won't be an SMT.
From what I understand the Steem blockchain is not fully open source... I think the dude will get sued if he forks the Steem blockchain without permission from Steemit Inc.

The Steem code is open source, the license was changed quite some time ago:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemd-is-now-completely-free-to-use-with-an-mit-license

It kind of seems like a bad move to me. Like divided we fall. Would make Steem and Vice stronger to just join forces.

Not everyone wants porn. Steemit added the 18+ content block to deal with it temporarily. I like this, it will allow VICE to be Steem porn and Steemit to be quality proof of brain.

That's why they'll air drop their tokens to steem holders. Like compensation.

My understanding (see comment here from @sndbox) is that they are forking the Steem code and blockchain. This means that VICE will have its own chain, rather than using an SMT on Steem's chain. The fork also means that users with cash in their Steem wallet at the fork snapshot will be getting equivalent VICE tokens, though there's been some confusion about how far back in time the snapshot occurred.

I think block 18.500.000. But tokens will not be given until 2021 (latest date)

@thejohalfiles - as others have commented, i confirmed with the head of the VICE token project that they are not going to be using an SMT. Also neither is Bob's repair as far as I understand. I provided some more details in my reply to the original post but wanted to respond to your comment also so you would see.

Youre right it is hard to find information on them bu for me it is clear that they must use steem, how else can they actually play for content like steem does? They will have to fork steem and have their own image and video and dlive style front end where you can upload videos, earn vicepower and vice backed dollars actually an amazing name lol and it will just work great, you earn vicepower and vice backed dollars to sell , yu can power up vicepower or power it down and you can use your vicepower to upvote other vice creators, JUST like dtube/dlive and steemit NSFW section just advertised to the adult industry audience so it has GREAT potential and we get the airdrop free anyway ...

They just have to wait for HarFork20 to fork steem so they get all the great new features and no account creation bottleneck and hopefully communities maybe even SMTs :D

why is your acc worth $5.1M wtf

I'm amazed at the ceaseless innovation occurring on this platform.

Thanks for sharing this @sndbox, and thanks for letting us know about some upcoming SMT based projects. I can imagine that a lot of smaller companies will flock to SMTs, as they offer a very simple solution to creating a token for an ICO.

I actually did a post about two hours ago overviewing SMTs, and will be doing a technical post over the next week or so, explaining the technicalities behind them, and analysing the mathematics from the white paper. I'd appreciate if you checked it out!

You will be paid to watch pornography.

When I hear such things, I understand that crypto-currencies really change our life !!! LOL, the next step is to get paid for having sex)))

It is exciting to see SMT to be functioning!

Just holding Steem and wait for SMT to bring steem to moon!

Informative thank you

Vice is making a mistake trying to become a Blockchain company instead of focusing on their core competency.

From what I've seen and heard it doesn't look like they have any competencies

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