It's always good to be thinking about the potential negative consequences or side effects @malloryblythe! We're confident the potential benefits will greatly outweigh the risks. The risks are extremely small. One useful example is to imagine the worst SMT possible. The worst SMT possible is one that has no value and no transactions. The cost of such an SMT to the Steem blockchain is exactly zero. A bad token is one that no one cares about. They don't want to use it and they don't want to earn it. But as I said, this doesn't cost the blockchain anything. The only SMTs that will consume a meaningful amount of blockchain resources are the successful ones and the bandwidth rate limiting algorithm ensures that if they get to that point they will have to power up more STEEM into Steem Power. The other aspect of SMTs that I think is the most underrated is the insights everyone will be able to gain from all the experimentation that will be happening. Yes, you're right, many SMTs will likely fail, but from the successes (the failures too) we will all gain valuable information. Thanks so much for the kind words regarding this platform we've spent the last two years of our lives building, as well as your constructive concerns.
Andrew Levine
Content Director, Steemit
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for responding, and for creating such an awesome platform!