Of late, I dedicated a bit of attention to what things are going to be like after the next hard fork. I believe that is a total game changer for Hive. For that reason, I am going to put together a multi-post series detailing how I see a few things panning out.
Hard Fork 23 is slated to implement SMTs and a Resource Credit Pool. According to the rough timeline laid out, we should see the coding completed in the next few weeks, thus enabling a testnet to be set up. Since it is such a large upgrade, extensive testing is going to be required. This means we are probably looking at 90 days on that end. The rough estimate for this fork is the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2 in 2020.
SMTs are a powerful mechanism that can alter a great deal of how we interact on the Internet. Since I wrote a post about it yesterday, I won't repeat the basic points.
What I do want to focus upon is the shift that will take place in terms of user approach. I sense that the SMT protocol is going to reverse the process from what we see now.
Source
At present, we are trying to attract people to Hive. A lot of the discussion is how do we go about doing that. Most of us have embarked upon the individual approach telling friends and family about it. Unfortunately, for most, the results were varied at best. Few came to check it out and, those that did, made a post or two before leaving.
This is a process we see happen repeatedly. Personally, I had it take place in the last few weeks. I signed an ex co-worker up, he posted a couple times and stopped. Isn't there something about leading a horse to water?
I do not believe we will see this process end after the next hard fork. However, it will be complimented by a different method.
Instead of trying to bring people to Hive, SMTs are going to bring Hive to people.
We will not try to attract them to what is taking place here. Instead, the ecosystem will be brought to where they are already transacting.
Many sites have their own "pools of fish". The size of the pond will vary but they are already full. Their user base is established, thus Hive just needs to tap into that. SMTs allow for that.
Once they are released, the protocol simply needs to be marketed to the website owners. If one of them agrees, the entire user base for the site is instantly going to be exposed to Hive. Having a token that is on the Hive blockchain will provide the pathway for transacting. Thus, even though they might not be aware they are on Hive, those people will know they can get rewarded for interacting with that website.
That is a much faster method than us trying to get a few people here and there.
Naturally, we have no idea, at this point, what type of sites are going to sign up. The adoption of cryptocurrency, thus far, is a bit slow. There are many reasons for that, with one of the biggest, in my opinion, being the complexity of the entire process. Ease of use is something we must work at.
SMTs is going to provide this to a degree. With a turnkey system, site owners will be able to establish a monetary system for their sites in a few minutes. We saw this same thing happen with Wordpress and website creation. Before that, knowledge of Java was required. That platform made websites turnkey, enabling anyone to set one up.
This analogy is also why I believe Hive will fade into the background. Few are aware that roughly 1/3 the websites out there are Wordpress sites. To be honest, nobody really cares about that either. The user is only concerned with the utility of the site, not where it is hosted, who designed it, or anything else with the technical parameters.
It will be the same with this. I doubt few are going to care which blockchain their information is being posted to. Nor are they going to give much attention to what else is taking place. The masses tend to focus upon what they want and that is it. A few might venture out which is fine but, most of us, visit the same sites daily while using a handful of applications.
Once difference I do see for the end user is that, if SMTs are successful, one could be getting tokens from a few different sites and have them all housed in the same wallet. That is one advantage to having the same protocol spreading throughout many different websites.
The key is instant access to some rather large numbers. A few examples are:
SeekingAlpha 15M MAU
Techcrunch 10M MAU
Marketwatch 16M MAU
None of these sites are considered household names. They are rather specific in their focus although large for their fields. However, when compared to some of the top sites out there, especially social media ones, this is a drop in the bucket.
Nevertheless, there are hundreds of thousands of opportunities out there for SMTs. Just think about the impact of a handful of sites with a few millions users each. Considering the number of transactions presently, that would cause a huge jump.
Of course, this does not mean the present applications on here stop their progress. The hard fork also addresses the on-boarding issue in a way I feel could be successful. Thus, the marketing efforts of the individual applications could pay bigger dividends if they are able to get more users signed up.
At some point, for huge success to ensue, we need to see bigger numbers. The Internet is all about traffic and numbers. Thus far, Hive is rather slow although that is a trend all across blockchain.
This is why SMTs have so much potential. By taking this approach, we are not disrupting what the user does each day. He or she can keep all bookmarks in place. The only difference is the activity done on a site that implements SMTs will be eligible for reward. That will happen automatically as upvotes are placed.
Essentially, we are no longer only trying to bring fish into the Hive pond. Instead, we are going to throw Hive into other people's ponds where fish are already present. SMTs are the technology that will allow the joining together of the different ponds.
Ultimately, these sites end up being a feeder system into Hive. While most will never venture past what they are presently doing, a certain percentage will investigate things. Here again, we see a simple numbers game in action. Even it is only 1% or 2%, when dealing with a pool of 100M people, that turns into a significant number.
If all goes well, as the tentacles of Hive spread across the Internet, people will keep bumping into it. Having a single log in for multiple sites is something that people are not accustomed to. When they start to realize their username and key works for many sites, I think the light bulb will start going off. Word will begin to spread about the possibility of getting rewarded on many different sites.
And, that point, if reached, is the best marketing in the world.
SMTs might be the "killer app" everyone is looking for.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
I'm very much liking the way both @steempress and @threespeak are going after the comment crowds around popular creators. I think back to how many great communities I was in around blogs and old forums which slowly died a death as Facebook sucked the oxygen out of the rooms.
As soon as I feel Steempress is solid enough, I'm going to be putting it forward to a pretty significant site in the UK.
There is no doubt some of the applications are positioning themselves very well for future liftoff. I think you can add D.tube to the list as a feeder system them. The project team there is opening up sign ups to all now which could see a percentage end up with Steem accounts.
It is interesting to watch the convergence of it all.
My involvement with cryptos started probably around 2012. A friend and former tenant pulled me down the rabbit hole kicking and screaming.
By the time STEEM came into my life Proof of Work had replaced any semblance of my childhood religion; although you could still call me a recovering catholic.
A little over three years ago when learning of STEEM it sounded like a cute idea; although having watched DevCoin's value raped through content rewards on its Wiki, DevTome, STEEM did not seem like a good investment. The governance seems ripe for corruption, as well, even if not taken to the extremes of its younger sibling EOS.
Yet there were geeks galore working on novel ideas for crypto use and they had their own social media platform running on a blockchain! Never again would one need to conform to the politics of bitcointalk. 😎
There was no illusion that there was a latent James Joyce in me. Having posted, only, a little over 100 posts in over 3 years is testiment to that. My plan was to buy in with the inevitable dip from reward rape by all those Dickens what-to-be's.
You could, politely, say that my feel for the bottom was premature when buying dophinhood at 3275 btc satoshi's, but no regrets as there is little doubt that STEEM will see better days with HF23 on the way. It will no longer be that one way sucking sound of golddiggers here when STEEM tops a dollar. It will be folks needing STEEM as a utility token and not even knowing it while using killer dApps.
Meanwhile, we Geeks will have our social media on the blockchain.
STEEM On!!! ♨
SMTs. All good.
But it will all be for nothing if the onboarding stays the same. Which is really bad. That’s why so many leave. I hope STINC will do something about it because it is much more important than any development.
Many projects are addressing the onboarding along with Steemit Inc programming the Resource Credit Pool into the next hard fork.
Hopefully the combination of all that is being put together will solve it.
Indeed. Time will tell!
One problem I see is that if one user uses multiple sites built on Steem, will this user understand that he can login to all of these sites with the same account? I already see some people speaking about "Steemmonsters accounts" and "Steemit accounts", they think those are different things and not the same and sometime create multiple accounts because of this, although they would use one, if they knew that it's possible. Maybe this is something solveable through a social-media-login like approach (e.g. Google/Facebook login, just with Steem). Something similar to Steemconnect or Steem Keychain, I guess.
Education is going to be key. We have a lot who are on here, even now, who mix up some basic points.
I think it will have to be a continual process....repetition.
"When they start to realize their username and key works for many sites, I think the light bulb will start going off."... Really ? You really think people didn't use something like auto-log yet? I remember how it was when I wrote my own first post here and than left. Same thing. Why? Steem seemed dead - in whole week I got no upvote, no reply... why bother? Who would like to write some blogs only for his own amusement? No one. But I guess that's still how it looks like - to every new steem member
Then what will be more correct? I just bought 2000 Steem - put #Steem or buy a second layer and put?
I am not sure what you are asking.
SMTs will surely change the way we presently conceive Steem. Thanks for sharing this brilliant piece.
Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!
I'm so excited waiting for the SMT.
#newsteem made my day too.
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I think "Hivedriver" is an example of this, and is already starting!
👍🏼🙋🏻♀️👍🏼