Smart Media Tokens are coming

in #steem5 years ago (edited)

SMTs coming.jpg

Now that the code for HF21 is complete, the Steemit blockchain team has shifted their focus entirely to completing Steemit’s Smart Media Tokens protocol (or “SMTs”).

What are SMTs?

For those who don’t know, Smart Media Tokens are a token-launching protocol similar to ERC20s on Ethereum, but with all the state-of-the-properties enabled by the Steem blockchain, like three-second fee-less transfers. SMTs will allow anyone to launch their own STEEM-like token with customizable features including Founders Tokens, Token Emission Rates, Proof-of-Brain, ICO Smart Contracts, and more. You can find more information as well as the SMT Whitepaper by heading over to https://smt.steem.com/

When SMT?

We are not yet ready to release a specific timeline on SMTs, because we want to hear from more community developers before we finalize the features which will be added to the initial version of SMTs. Based on our initial outreach, the demand for SMTs is still extremely high. Despite the delay, no other blockchain project has managed to deliver the feature set that SMTs will have, because no other project has the Steem blockchain as a foundation.

One of the many reasons that we chose to develop SMTs was our belief that, as an application-specific blockchain protocol, Steem was uniquely suited to hosting powerful tokens with unparalleled features. The fact that no other protocol has yet to meet this demand validates this view.

Current SMT Work

Because Smart Media Tokens are already delayed, we are doing everything we can to simplify the protocol while still giving developers all the features they need from a decentralized token protocol with Proof-of-Brain. One example of such changes is our decision to remove “Hidden Caps” from the ICO code.

Hidden Caps

There was a time when projects would offer tokens for sale without disclosing the amount of contributions required for a successful launch. With the benefit of hindsight, it has become clear that such ICOs were mainly performed by untrustworthy actors. After consulting with community developers, we have decided to remove this feature. Not only will removing hidden caps eliminate a surprising degree of complexity, and by extension engineering work, but it will also help ensure that more SMTs are legitimate. That’s why one of our top priorities is removing code relating to these hidden caps, which will simplify the process of completing SMTs and enable us to deliver the protocol on an acceptable timeline.

We have identified a number of places where the protocol can be simplified without reducing its functionality, and will continue to look for any opportunity to accelerate the release of SMTs while maintaining their potency.

Thank You

We understand that the wait for Smart Media Tokens has been a long one and we appreciate those users and developers who have stuck with Steem. Fortunately, that wait was not entirely in vain. The addition of Resource Credits to Steem in HF20 and the release of MIRA were critical to ensuring that the Steem blockchain was sufficiently scalable to support the dramatic increase in activity we expect to see once developers and businesses begin launching SMTs. While we wish SMTs hadn't been delayed, Steem is now in a much better position to add Smart Media Tokens. We do apologize for the delay, and hope you can bear with us just a little bit longer!

Future Updates

We will continue to release updates through @steemitblog as we make progress on SMTs and will provide a timeline for their release as soon as we are able, so be sure to give us a follow!

Stay tuned and Steem On.

The Steemit Team

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https://steemit.com/steem/@themarkymark/curation-reverse-auction-changing-from-15-minutes-to-1-minute-in-hard-fork-21

Hi steemit, is there any reason why this change

  • was not announced
  • was not discussed
  • was implemented after the work on hf21 has "finished"

This is a major change in steem economics, why it was not mentioned in any of the hf21 blog posts and just straight up added to the code?

 5 years ago (edited)

Steemit Inc. actually advised against making this change in HF21, or any other changes for that matter (unless they are required bug fixes). However, the witnesses took a vote and almost unanimously came to the conclusion of adjusting it to one minute. It’s a topic that has been discussed for quite some time. The last minute effort to get this added in was mostly led by @thecryptodrive

Thank you for clarification.

@cardboard it had been discussed by witnesses and stakeholders many times and every time no one really closed the deal and said "hey let's settle on x number and go for it", I had previously called for this to be included in this HF but nothing had happened yet as just mentioned, so I took the bull by the horns and got consensus witnesses to agree on a common figure and presented it to @justinw who had said to me that if witnesses could agree on a figue in a very short window, Steemit will be happy to add it. You can see my post decision public announcement here.

. There are huge UX benefits and users won't feel like they are being robbed of curation if they vote too earl.

Now they will be robbed by bots.

While I can understand people being concerned about code being added at a late time with little discussion. (I see that as a security risk) I certainly think it is a good and solid change that supports a real end user who maybe doesn't want to understand the complicated thing that is Steem.

Read a post, like it? Go ahead and upvote and don't try to play the 15 minute game.

Personally I don't think it favors the bots, any more or less. It favors those who want to use the site in some sort of natural way.

I just remember a big farking kerfluffle when they changed it to 15 minutes; it seems kind of odd that it gets tossed in like a bill in congress that tacks on 20 unrelated things (maybe so people don't notice and get all up in arms?). This HF is tipping the balance of curation rewards (which doesn't effect us minnows very much on the curation end; will bite us on the author end), AND giving bots a better way to earn curation rewards.
I don't pretend to understand the technical side of things, but it all seems like a giant middle finger to anyone who can't buy themselves a whale ranking. The big draw of Steem to us lowly plebs is that you can earn your way up and not have to buy in like Bitcoin, and this is making that harder.
I mean, I'm not going anywhere, and maybe it'll turn out OK somehow, and I'm worrying over nothing. I'm not trying to be all hyperbolic and "Steem is ruined!!1!!11!!!1!" or whatever, it just has that feeling of when the company you work for tells you that they are reorganizing but don't worry, everything is fine, we're a family, and then three months later half the workforce is laid off.
Minnows, and let's face it, unless you can buy in from the get-go, you're going to be a plankton/minnow for a while (I'll be here two years in September), aren't really concerned with the 15 minute game because our curation rewards are pennies. It's spending an awful lot of energy to, what - earn an extra half a penny? Maybe some folks have that kind of dedication, but I doubt most of us do, let alone the real end users, or mass adoption-imagined masses. It's saving us from an effort that would be a waste of time for us to engage in in the first place.
I have hope that SMTs will make things better for us unwashed masses, but I don't have hope about the new split or one minute window. I don't hang out with witnesses and stakeholders; I don't know where they ostensibly have these conversations or if they are public; I am not a cryptographer. I'm just that regular user that got really excited at the possibilities of blockchain once I began to learn about it and has read a couple of books on the subject and reads a little crypto news (which is probably more interest than most of the masses everyone expects to come over some day from other social media). And to me, this feels like being a cog in a corporation - you don't have any real stake (just your ability to pay your rent, which is huge to you, but jack shit to the CEO), you don't have any real voice, the board/CEO/bosses don't care about you at all, you just kind of have to accept whatever gets handed down from on high and make the best of it. And me stating this feeling here is as much an exercise in futility as speaking up during a company-wide meeting: the decisions have already been made, the feelings of the little people might get lip service but that's about it.
So I guess, I don't know, I'm just venting. But I haven't spoken to a single Steem peasant who is happy about HF21 at all. They're all worried about how they're going to pay the rent. Me too.

Hey but you earned 18 STUs for this comment!

I have hope that SMTs will make things better for us unwashed masses

We do too!! Check out our project

What is the motivation of this change? From the user's perspective, it seems illogical.

It makes bot / automated votes > users organic votes. No user can compete with bots and put vote early enough to get good curation reward.

Currently, the best reward is when we vote, say, between 5 and 10 minutes. I don't think it is currently a big deal with users voting too early then and "losing" curation reward.

I've read post from forum and this sentence below is definitely not true:

(...), they just lose curation by voting earlier than 15 mins.

They may lose, they may gain. It all depends. It depends on sum of rshares before our vote, sum of rshares of our vote, time of vote and total sum of rshares after payout. But for most users in most cases the best time to vote is between 5-10. And the smaller the vote the more profitable is to vote earlier. On the other hand whales should vote at the end of the curation window.

To give a better picture, it may look like this.

@jacekw @cardboard currently the UX is terrible for users who know about the 15 mins reverse auction window, leaves a heavy cognitive load and people second guessing if they should wait to vote and often even forget to come back and vote. It also isn’t conducive to short form content and the flow of discussion. There is a small tradeoff for that with bots being able to vote sooner, but overall it means the user gets more curation and helps get the content out of superlinear to linear faster. Also there is so much content now on Steem that the bots will serve to vote on established authors and helping retain them while human users can scout for new or first time users and will overall enhance curation.

It’d still be nice to have more warning/transparency so users who aren’t witnesses can give some input.

Of all the changes regarding HF21 this is the only one that makes sense to me.
Thanks for looping me in.

I know why they did this, it is so they an blank out our comment immediately!

WARNING: IF YOU REPLY TO THIS ACCOUNT YOU WILL BE FLAGGED, YOUR REP HARMED AND ALL OF YOUR REWARDS REMOVED. DO NOT ENGAGE WITH THE TRASH. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

So much salt in the comments. haha
But for reals I'm looking forward to it and I may be skeptical as well... but I am also very much routing for you guys!
I'd love to see them happen.

QUESTIONS:

  • What is "founders tokens"
  • Token emission rates... is that an aspect of a token distribution system?
  • I assume proof of brain means you'll be creating a distribution system for the coins
  • Any examples of a couple of simple smart contracts you can conceive of being made?

So much salt in the comments. haha

It's pretty annoying especially seeing it coming from the worst accounts on the platform.

I believe Steem is the only true governance chain(some of it's forks have this governance system as well), we have a vote and a say what code we want ran in an indirect way. What a beautiful system.

if you think about it parliament has more people in it than 50 ... but i steer clear from politics , i havent really been following because i have no power over it but so far from what i heard HF21 seems to be an elitist move ... i hope it doesnt push too much of the bulk away ... wait and see until implementation ... it started out as a circlejerk for people with a certain level of income and ...

i dont really dare voice total opinion i just picked up bits here and there im too busy on my own stuff and i dont have a say in it anyway

and : it looks like its gonna push more power toward, its like a simulation of life, only this is whalestreet, not wallstreet ...

i will hold my opinion for the realz unti i see what it actually does ...

founders tokens

The creator of a SMT basically "insta-mining" some tokens for themselves.

Well said, Sir.

my feeling exactly!

Please do it step by step.

I think first step should be

  • token creation & dex

and this might be enough as the first step and much better than more delay for more features.

Since SMT is very complicated, this way is also the right way in terms of testing.

Thanks for the feedback! We're definitely going to release SMTs in "versions." We don't think the SMT protocol will ever be "complete." It will continue to be updated as developers discover new token functionalities that could add value to their apps and businesses. The focus is entirely on keeping things as simple as possible, so that we can release SMTs as soon as possible.

We know you can't code SMT's. How about addressing the falling STEEM ranking due to the liquidity problem. STEEM is now ranked 72 and STEEM price is falling due to the lack of exchanges supporting STEEM.

u huh, something that would benefit EVERYONE , not just those who already sit on a pile ... @socky, you've been campaigning for like since the dawn of time now, right ... deaf mans ears ... i quit making proposals pretty fast ... i left steemchat after four hours after i joined ... that's not my crowd lol

but it's still the ichiban blockchainsystem ... the rest is just "normals" life with the 1 vs 99% ... business as usual

Just tired of seeing this shit everywhere lately.

In that case, you’re using the wrong site.

WYSIWYG editor is still too difficult to implement (steemSTEM, stemQ, steemHunt, Engrave already have it, but never mind it's too complicated)

What makes you think that? I've been following the progress of GitHub, and they are certainly capable of programming it: there's just a lot to program.

  • HF-20 debacle
  • We have heard these promises many times before with nothing ever delivered.

They even had an era of prosperity with huge hiring spree and spending with no release of SMTs as promised.

We already know they are "coming" theyve been "coming for years now? what about a steemit mobile app? @sneak promised that on STAGE actually lol

We have https://steem-engine.com sorry no one cares about SMTs because all the big projects waiting for SMTs already made a Steem Engine token, and it doenst automatically = success.... its humbled a lot of people... SMTs are not going to do anything more than Steem ENgine tokens have done so why not make some announcements about things we NEED like ONBOARDING?

Go help @steem.ninja and their https://invite.steem.ninja project which needs delegation and RC mana from accounts like @steem and @steemit and you know @ned you can get ned to plug in his RC mana to https://steeminvite.com and generate millions of new accounts a year for free instantly if we had a took, to automate that.... we need onboarding solutions.... the community is stuck trying to strugle to onboard, when steemit inc should be doing this, its a serious problem.....

We need free accounts - amen! No.1 priority

And we have them. This was included in hf20

When I say free, I mean:

  • you come to steem-related website
  • you click sign-up
  • you get the account in a matter of minutes
  • account that works

Good idea, please go ahead and let us know what the url of that service is ;-)
If you can also deal with signup abuse, I could help with claiming accounts.

Spoiler alert: it's not that easy

(how would you handle resource consumption?)

I actually propose that we split accounts into two kinds: 1. On-chain accounts, 2. Off-chain accounts.

This works for Minds.com, which I believe is kicking our asses right now. At least, they are getting Youtube idols like Tim Pool...

Some things are just changes to condenser rather than the blockchain. Follows, resteems don't really need to cost RCs, and we could have off-chain comments that can't experience financial rewards.

This would allow the wider traffic to engage but still not be fully involved. Its like window shopping, and many people might jump on board eventually that would have been scared away by financial investment requirements.

It is kind of like how Medium does things. There is public Medium content and then the content that requires you to be a paying member to access. After seeing others get $0.08 all the time for just saying "your content is awesome!" maybe others will be willing to cough up some dough for a little STEEM.

Sign-up via FB, yahoo, google...
Abuse is checked by a simple parameter - when those accounts were created. @irelandscape / @stemq made such log-in last year

Don't worry about the abuse, there are no people willing to join :D
They also have no reason to abuse the system with multiple accounts, because economically it gives them no advantage.

Indeed it's simple:

  • those who want to comment once, @guest_Something_Something, public posting key, let them interact with the platform for free (no fee, no rewards, just a normal, boring internet)
  • those who want to sign-up can do it with the existing accounts, just like on every other serious platform

Let them join. Once they are hooked, think about the details.
2FA, private keys, how it works, they will learn in a month.
It's wrong to scare them off even before they join

its called https://steeminvite.com and @ned using @steem and @steemit RC mana he can create 5 million accounts a year but you must not have known that?

Not true. We have what is called blockchain subsidized account creation and you need what? 5K Sp? 4k? 6k? to create ONE account every 5 days.... real helpful.... sorry but need has to spend his own money to buy new accounts no way around it. unless next hardfork will lower the requirements, but ned and steemit inc were SUPPOSED to be paying for a solution to get rid of duplicates, a SIMPLE way is using what they USED rto use before giving up, reddit accounts with certain karma, or twitter or facebook accounts with certain activity, and yeah that can be abused, but its harder, theres no perfect solution BUT IS NOT OUR fucking jobs @g2g its steemit incs jobs lol typical weirdo response telling teh end user to do the work of steemit inc

There is a reason why you have lost so much money and steem is 40 cents.. dont try to tell me you hadnt wished you had stayed in BTC this whole time instead of steem.... but if @ned had focused on new users things could be different,m who KNOWS how many new investors and developers we could have gotten .... if ned would have spent a few million dollars a year onboarding... who KNOWS how many Millions he could have made....... steem is not in a vacuum

Yall' know what would be better? If it didn't cost so much fucking RC's to create an account in the first place. At this pace, even with the entirety of Stinc's SP ie RC's creating free accounts 24/7/365 they wouldn't be able to onboard millions of new users we are hoping to onboard once the floodgates open.

Typical Steemit logic :D

  • you have the account
  • and a bunch of power
  • now you can create new accounts every single day
  • when you absolutely don't need them

Analogy, thirsty man in Sahara. It's fine, we have invented water pipes, so you can drink once you are at home :D

We don't have transaction fees. Also, every new account has free RC for basic operations. Forever.
Solution is to keep potential users off-chain and onboard only those that will pay for it (literally or just by value added to the chain).

Solution is to keep potential users off-chain

you just lost the game LOPl why not just make a COINBASE account?

HEY I have a solution! Just WAIt for coinbase to add steem like they are about to, then steem users can just use COINBASE to hold their steem, and they can use a third party off chain site to log themin with username and password, no key, no protection from censorship just centralized nodes in control of everything yeah great solution :D

dude you are suffering from "depression sickness" where you honestly believe this is the best its gonna get, so instead of finding a way to feed everyone your seriously considering letting people just duie off, only feed thsoe who "add value" to steem LOl

who teh fuck are we to decide who is going to ultmitaly add value?

Ive seen users like @gigafart who were basically at $0 and i helped support them and because of my and a few others upvotes, they decide dto buy like at one poiunt over $30K USD worth of steem JUST ONE GUY.... I mean this is teh problem... we will NEVER know if we dont take teh chance and yeah a lot of peopel will get duplicate accounts.... steemiut icn ws givingf out free nstanta ccounts in 2017 untill trhey had to have a "waiting list" so SOMEOEN WAS subsidizing it at one point

HF20 has plenty of options but we need @ned or some whale to siupport @pharesim and https://steeminvite.com and @steem.ninja https://invite.steem.ninja which coudl expand with a lot more delegation, and more RCS put into steeminvite by @steem @steemit @xeroc @thejohalfiles etc whales who MAY or may not have some SP undelegated to use, very few whales left have undelegated fresh SP to use but many do and we can take advantage of that,a nd startr handing out steem accounts to KNOWN REDDIT users and start with handing teh accounts ouyt to known social media influencers and let THEM hand out the accounjts to their followers etc

Dead on accurate. They should be calling up all the Youtube big names, the Twitter journalists, actors/musicians and just say straight up that each of them will get an automatic free account with 50,000 SP delegated to them.

this is true! so that the added value steem we need new active users

They already gave us fast free accounts once. :)

memehub is a way to help onboard through memes. We plan to offer free steem acct creation for memers after using our site a certain amount. got a lot in the works for memes on steem

i almost thought this was spam the way you wrote this be careful lol just start with something more natural if i were you :D like "HEY that reminds me, MEMHUB!" lol

will u be the follow up to dmania ?

kk, ill take that into acct. Our system will be far better than the dmania platform and without the scammer part lol

oh come on dmania never scammed anyone, it had some script that was infected by a lot of similar software, he didnt put that in to make a few dollars or whatever,

Im not sure if this is sarcasm or not?

Partiko is the best app you can dream of...

problem solved

Thanks for notifying us. That user has been blocked and reported and the comments deleted.

Obvious scam, but people will fall for it.

#sbi-skip

Clever? WTF is going to fall for that?

'Please send us X amount of money and we'll send you twice as much back'... ?

Posted using Partiko Android

Sadly people are dumb enough to fall for it...

That is a scam, never send! FB should seize that account!!!

What is the cost of creating custom SMT? Any spam protection?

Posted using Partiko iOS

Last time there were talks about it I heard 10 sbd being thrown around but that may have changed.

Thats... incredibly cheap.

How about shifting part of that focus for doing some contingency planning for a change? If HF21 backfires:

  • Will you guys even notice? Are there quantifications for success, failure and total role-back level disaster?
  • If you guys notice, can we expect another HF20: "just let it stabilize" phase followed by frantic duct taping, or can we expect actual contingency planning for the HF21 roll-out this time?

Seriously, telling us you are no longer focusing on HF21 isn't exactly something we need to be hearing from you guys at this point in time. We need to be hearing about quantified success, quantified failure, kill switches, contingency plans, and other such things that could create some confidence that we aren't heading head first into an other HF20 disaster this time around, but now with only a fraction of the old staff.

Are there quantifications for success

This will be my number one qualifying question for all SPS proposals (if HF21 goes through).

If I were a consensus witness, it would be my number one qualifying question for all version changes and hard forks. It should be every consensus witnesses number one qualifying question in order to do their jobs - secure the blockchain.

On a completely unrelated note... have you thought about creating/joining a witness team?

Did you see any end user testing for HF21?
So far all articles are speculating, not a single test result has been shown.
This is very scary.
HF20 business as usual.

We should test for a while before implementation . Testing doesn't always expose all the bugs and even if it does sometimes that commutation between tester and steemit breaks down , that is what happened with hf20 . Timcliff pointed out the bugs i believe pre fork .

No one pointed anything out pre hf20.
It was just a disaster.
And this time.. No one seems to do any end user test cases. None of the high paid witnesses.

Correct me, if you know of any test results.

Yes, very much this ^

Are there quantifications for success

Sure, the state-of-(f)art method of XXI century, it's called feelings.
If you feel it's right, it must be right, otherwise, you are a nazi.

They'll notice...and then promptly make a post declaring it a huge success, while the entire house is on fire.

Pourquoi ne pas rejoindre l'initiative de Steem-Engine qui fonctionne déjà depuis plusieurs mois. Vous gagneriez un temps précieux et répondriez à votre volonté de mettre en avant les meilleurs développeurs qui travaillent autour de l'écosystème Steem.

Because... Jealousy, ego, and stuff?