RE: What are community tokens trying to solve?
Everyone wants to be a whale: Early investors versus developers
This seems a case where current whales (early investors) of Steem will be against community tokens while wannabe whales (developers) will be for the community tokens because then they have the chance to issue tokens and become whales of those new tokens.
For community tokens
The community tokens will attract developers to build apps for the Steem ecosystem and the apps will attract more Steem users.
Ethereum is currently attracting a lot of developers who are building lots of apps and increasing the value of Ethereum. Maybe this is why @ned is now open to following Ethereum's model. Whether those apps will become popular with users. time will tell.
If the Ethereum model is followed, then the creation of Steem community tokes will require the spending/burning of Steem which will result in increased Steem scarcity and increased value. So there is a possibility for a win-win scenario for both current Steem holders and for developers.
Against community tokens
Steem, unlike Ethereum, is attracting a significant number of users who are not developers and who may end up being confused by the new community tokens. Steem, Steem Backed Dollars and Steem Power are already confusing enough. This confusion might slow the growth of the Steem user base.
Differentiate from Ethereum
I suggest the Steem blockchain should stick to one token and be different from Ethereum. If Steem follows Ethereum's model and is unable to compete, failure is a very likely possibility. If Steem is able to continue attracting newbies without confusing them with even more tokens, then it will follow another path, which may involve community tokens once newbies start coming in with a multi token view of the world. Whether that path will be more successful than Ethereum's path, time will tell.
Thanks for your input
This is a valid use case but it is not solving anything as you could do it just as easily on bitshares ( like zappl did recently)
@ned said that steem tokens could have their own reward pool, which means the creation and distribution of these tokens is going to be independant of steem. Each token will be able to function without steem and are not going to be backed by steem. Moreover people are going to trade these for BTC completely bypassing steem.
Honestly, I did not listen to the podcast.
If the community tokens are going to bypass Steem yet benefit from the Steem blockchain then that would not be fair to holders of Steem and that is not just me sucking up to whales. The Steem bypass would be a move to attract and appease developers.
Developers are most probably the most important netizens of the blockchain world at this time, but harming early investors in order to appease developers maybe sound business but is it fair?
Well, this is the Wild Wide West of finance and technology, and fairness is only determined by market forces. So I suggest diversification because you never now which project will screw you over.