SteemMag – Steemit’s Weekend Digest #34: Ushering In A New Dawn With SMTs: A Chat With The Steem Dev behind DTube …Meeting The Creator of the first Steem-based token and This Week On Steemit

It is with great delight I welcome you to the thirty-fourth edition of SteemMag, a weekend digest for Steemians.
It’s an historic one as it’s the first edition after one of the most important announcements on Steemit – The Launch of Smart Media Tokens by @ned.

Every edition, I take a look at some of the most important/trending topics and have a chat with top Steemians who have expert views on such topics.

Here are links to Issue #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 , 5 , #6, #7 , #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 , #13, #14, #15, 16,#17, #18 , #19 , 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, #26 , #27 , #28 , #29, #30, #31 , #32 and #33

This week has been an amazing one on Steemit. You can feel the excitement amongst users after @ned’s announcement and we all hope and look forward to an amazing future.

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In this edition, SteemMag had a chat with @biophil, the creator of POCKET, the first subtoken built on the Steem Blockchain.

We also had a chat with one of the most prolific Steem developers, @heimindanger . He is not only the creator of the widely used Steemwhales.com but also the developer behind popular DTube, the decentralized video platform.

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A Chat With @heimindanger

SteemMag What inspired you to create Dtube?

@heimindanger -
YouTube and STEEM. They are probably my top 2 most visited websites 😃

SM - Which was more challenging in developing, Dtube or Steemwhales?
@heimindanger
Both took a while. SteemWhales was hard because I was discovering the STEEM Blockchain and how to work with it. DTube was hard because I was discovering IPFS. So as the second depended on the first, I'd say DTube was more challenging.

SteemMag - How has been the reception of Steemians and non-Steemians to Dtube so far?
@heimindanger -
I honestly couldn't hope for a better reception of DTube after the launch on SteemIt. Articles are rocking the trending and 99% of the comments are overly positive. I don't have much data about non-Steemians, as you have to be one to be on dtube, but I have talked with a lot of people who joined Steem thanks to DTube.

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SteemMag - With the launch of SMTs, do you plan on creating one for Dtube?
@heimindanger
Yes, why not? I believe content separation to be important, so should the reward pools. I actually cannot wait for the SMT launch, I would love to see how much it would affect the hot and trending sections

SM - Where do you see DTube in 3-5 years?
@heimindanger
It's hard to tell because DTube relies on other technologies such as STEEM and IPFS. If STEEM and IPFS keep doing well as they are doing now, I have no doubt DTube will be a very popular website.

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Thanks for having another chat with SteemMag, @heimindanger. We are all excited to witness the beginnings of this amazing platform. Wish you and DTube loads of luck in your endeavors.

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A Chat With @biophil

SteemMag - 1. Your work gave Steemians a prelude to how SMTs could work, how was the reception to POCKET?
@biophil -
The reception was fantastic, and basically everything anybody has said has been positive. An important aspect of this is that I didn't charge anybody for the tokens: there's no better way to invite controversy than to ask people for money. Another thing that other devs could probably learn from is that whenever you can, you should act from the principle that "actions speak louder than promises." I didn't tell anybody I was doing this until I launched, and I believe that smoothed everything out tremendously.

SM - How would SMTs affect your Steem-based development? Are you planning on launching a formal SMT powered token?
@biophil
I haven't thought through all of the possibilities yet of how I'll be able to use SMTs, but I'm excited about the project. I love the fundraising possibilities, but as a US citizen I have to be very cautious about how I navigate that due to the uncertainty surrounding SEC policies on ICOs. To your second question, I stay pretty quiet about my future plans on principle; however, I have thought about the various ways that POCKET could be implemented as an SMT. POCKET balances could be snapshotted, and new shares of a non-inflating SMT could be distributed to balance holders. I'm not sure what purpose it would serve, and POCKET would probably lose its place as a comment-based tipping currency -- but maybe it would be a good direction for the project. We'll see where the community is then!

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SteemMag - What can Steem Inc and Steemians in general do to accelerate adoption rates of SMTs across the media and crypto industry?
@biophil
The reason I built POCKET is that it was an easy proof-of-concept (that's what POC stands for, anyway) decentralized autonomous application that could integrate directly with Steem. I didn't ask anybody's permission to do it. I didn't ask anybody if they thought it was a good idea. I didn't have to! That's the incredible beauty of Steem, that it's a completely public and fee-free blockchain that has tremendous untapped possibilities. Hopefully POCKET has inspired people to think bigger about what Steem can be; if it accomplishes only this, I'll be happy with my work

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It was nice having a chat with you @biophil. It’s always a pleasure seeing the POCKET bot at work. Look forward to even more exciting use cases from you.

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This brings us to the end of an amazing week for the entire Steem ecosystem.

P.S

I'm pleased to select @ceepee, @steembusiness and @ogochukwu as the winners of the SteemMag design competition announced in my last post. I will also be giving @laylahsophia and @lemmybe some tokens for participating. Thanks so much guys.

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Thanks for getting to the end of this weekend's special edition. What was your favorite feature? Do you have any project you would like to have featured on SteemMag?
I would love to hear from you!

And don’t forget to follow @steem-mag and other mentioned Steemians ;)