Paula... you definitely have a market. You are respected there. If you create a SMT you will likely have no competition (at first).
But you are right asking how should you define your SMT (the whitepaper, the community rules - yes, if you create a SMT you would likely tie it up with your community for the PoB part), to become a thriving SMT ecosystem.
You also identified a great example and the biggest problem, from this point of view: lack of functional economy.
Will you have enough "sinks" to compensate for the "faucets"? If there aren't many and big enough sinks, you need smaller faucets. Otherwise there will be selling pressure on the SMT.
In theory, you don't need technical skills to be able to create a SMT. In practice, the ongoing process will probably require at some points the aid of someone who knows the inside of SMTs (and maybe exchanges).
Dear @gadrian
Interesting comment.
Question I would ask: is it good? Lack of competition = being pioneer, which is difficult and expensive and hardly ever pays back.
Indeed. However this can be reduced by lack of airdrops (the worst marketing method out there I can imagine). It's crutial is to make long term believers to get involved as an investors. People who want to support your project and idea. Not those who care about ROI.
I would value 10k usd raised from strong supporters way more than 100k raised from users focusing on returns.
Yours, Piotr
Competition is healthy, maybe it would push all parties to do better things and reduce marketing costs for awareness of the niche. But should we push once again the SteemMonsters example? First game on Steem, launched unfinished, where is it now? It's true, it took a great partnership and tons of work to make this happen. None of them separately would have had the same success, in my opinion.
Few care only about the project and idea, maybe except the creators themselves, because it's their baby. Eventually all will want to see some ROI, the only difference is the timeframe. If they want to see it in 1 month, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, ongoing (residual) income after a certain term etc.
But I understand what you are saying. In the initial phase, before the project really lifts off, it's way better to have long-term oriented investors in it instead of people looking for immediate return or daily income.
If people (i.e. investors) would understand that, maybe the price of STEEM related tokens would catch up to development.
Good morning @gadrian
Would you mind if I take few minutes of your time? (I hope I'm not asking this question to often ;)
Anyway .... together with few core members of project.hope team - we'te trying to promote our recent publication: an article explaining economy behind our non-profit community project build on STEEM blockchain.
Perhaps I could ask you to spare few minutes and check it out and share your feedback with me.
I would absolutely appreciate it a lot. I read all comments and I drop solid upvote on each valuable one.
Link: https://steemit.com/hive-175254/@project.hope/3-ways-of-joining-our-efforts-project-hope-economy-explained
Yours, Piotr
"Will you have enough "sinks" to compensate for the "faucets"? If there aren't many and big enough sinks, you need smaller faucets. Otherwise, there will be selling pressure on the SMT."
I was thinking something on the lines of this, but it went out of my mind when I was doing the post.