No, SMTs were Ned's brainchild (after the success of ERC20 tokens) for him to hype up Steem and cash-out. What good are sub-tokens, if the underlying technology aka reward-mechanism is broken? I'm sure that some SMTs will be successful and that those experiments are needed to find out what is working. But this will not help HIVE, as the main token.
For example: what if an SMT finds out the perfect curve and way to reward pool via a reward pool? This will make Hive's reward pool look like a VW Gold in comparison to a Lamborghini.
Let SMTs deal with any reward mechanism, while Hive is free of that burden and can focus on being THE FUNDAMENT for a whole ecosystem. If people really want a global rewards pool on Hive, then it should at least be cut by 90% or so. But we absolutely need to make it easier for stakeholders to earn with their HIVE, without having to participate in that voting-system. I want Hive staking to be supported on Binance, Huobi, Crypto.com & co. - this is NOT (!) possible with the current system!
I was under the impression that SMTs will fulfill the second layer reward mechanism and the global reward pool would be abolished completely or at least cut down massively.
Hive would turn into a utility token and only allocate towards the DAO, witness rewards and provide RCs and serve as stake for witness and DAO voting.
I would expect most SMTs to fail, like most HE tokens. Some will succeed and serve a broader set of communities as currency.
this bit! :)