Personally, I'm really excited to
see what these SMT's can do!

Uses for both inside and outside
of the Steemit community we know.

For a long while now, a large part of Steemit's development resources have been put towards the development of these SMT's. In fact, you might have seen the latest status update about it on @SteemitBlog's recent post HERE or at @ned's impromptu Q&A session at an Austin Steemit Meetup. As the launch of SMT's gets closer, you'll hear more and more about them.

Read Steemit's 61 Page SMT White Paper Here

But as always, the point of my "Answering Common Question" FAQ's are to give you a simple answer to the questions I know you have...this time surrounding SMT's. So rather than glaze over people's eyes, we'll be trying to focus more on how these can actually be used, versus technical details. If you feel you want to hear some great discussions on Smart Media Tokens, I've already put out three, one hour SMT Talk podcast episodes:

SMT Talk: Rewarding Behaviors

SMT Talk: Smart Contracts

SMT Talk: Communities

This is also a frequent topic over in the Steem Experience Discord...if you're ever looking to ask some questions or discuss with others.

To join simply click the invite link --> CLICK HERE.

What are Smart Media Tokens? (SMTs)

The short answer is that Smart Media Tokens are easy to setup, cheap to create, custom cryptocurrency (or token.) You'll get to choose things like their name, reward structure, if you want to raise funds through an ICO, how many tokens to make, etc.

Even more importantly, SMT's are to be cheap and easy to setup. All that's needed is a Steemit account, 1 Steem Dollar and fill out the options in the setup forms. Here is a sample of the options page from the SMT Whitepaper:

How much would one of my custom Smart Media Tokens be worth?

Not everybody has to have their custom tokens be 'worth' (i.e. trade-able for other Bitcoin, US Dollars, etc) something. Some people might have their needs met just by being able to pass the SMT's around their group or redeemed for things (like paying a subscription fee, an upvote, or any other 'non-money' based option.)

However, for those who want to have a monetary value for their SMT's, there are a number of options:

funds can be deposited by the creator
- Example: I want to make 1000 "Chica" coins, worth $1000, then I would deposit $1000.
raised through an ICO (initial coin offering). Think of this as fundraising through selling some of your custom SMT.
- Options include how many of the tokens to sell, for how much, how often, etc.
and even be available to trade on the (Steem Internal SMT) market. Most of you have seen the current internal market... just imagine it with more things being traded beyond Steem and Steem Dollars.
- Because this will be part of the Steem Blockchain, there will be three second or less transaction times and zero fees.

This is one of the few times I ask you a question as my answer: How much do YOU want your tokens to be worth? Do you want to be able to decide or let the market? The beauty of SMT's is that you literally can make a coin to do what you want...the trick is figuring out What do YOU want your SMT to do?

How can my SMT's be distributed or given out?

This again is largely up to you to decide. But you have a bunch of options available to suit your needs including:

Given out through the ICO sale
Have some given out through voting (like we have on Steemit)
Give them out manually for interacting, leaving comments, attending events, answering questions, etc
if they can be Bought and Sold on the market

MOST IMPORTANTLY: How can these SMT's be useful?

A huge aspect of SMT's is that they can be put to use outside of Steemit itself their own websites, making it easy to start interacting with their clients or audience in a new way. For places like Wordpress or PhpBB a nice widget feature could be put together using the current Steem API's (here and here or tools like Steemconnect.

The whitepaper itself give the following use cases:

Content Publishers - Single Token Support: This would go on a person, group or business's own website where they (or other users) can give out their SMT by voting on comments to reward and entice interactions
Forums - Multiple Token Support: This would apply onto a forum board setup (think of ChainBB or Reddit) where upvotes can reward and entice posting and commenting.
Comments Widget for Online Publishers: This is how SMT's are able to get included right in to tons of existing websites, with an easy to add and setup widget. Developers can be motivated to create and maintain something like this by using the shared reward options.

One of the ways in which publishers will be onboarded faster to SMT integrations is by offering a Steem-based comments widget that can easily be integrated into existing blogs that are built on software such as WordPress and Blogger. The developer employing the widget would be able to take a percentage of the tokens (called “Shared Rewards”) distributed to the commenters for themselves, thereby creating a business opportunity[.]
-SMT Whitepaper

Sub-Community Moderators and Managers: This is one I'm personally excited to see. Not only can communities (which are also are slated to be available to create on Steemit) build their own SMT's, but they can set them up to help the group be self funded and pay people for the 'jobs' they server. For example, a small percentage of every transactions (of one of your SMT) can be 'charged' and given to the community. These funds could then be automatically paid out (using smart contracts, which are a part of the whitepaper) to people fulfilling community roles (like moderators, helpers, etc.)

Arbitrary Assets - Tokens Representing Real World Assets: This use is for those wanting their SMT to be focused more on being trading on the open market and holding some real world (think of this as something you could 'cash out'.)
Quoting the whitepaper:

Let’s examine an instance in which an entrepreneur is looking to provide liquidity in the Steem ecosystem. The entrepreneur can issue an SMT without inflation properties, and simply that they will provide structure to peg it to USD (or any other debt, contract, or asset), making it like an IOU or basic derivative. The structure they provide to the asset
includes buying and selling it near $1, similar to Tether. The entrepreneur sets up bank wire capabilities for buying and selling, and takes a small % on each transaction. The derivative trades against STEEM, and also brings capital into the ecosystem to be used across all tokens.

I've already seen a couple of places who have built up their plans and even started their ICO's:

Bob's Repair
and Appics

In the end though...there is tons of room to be creative on how you can use your custom made tokens. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend reading @donkeypong's post called The Day the Paywalls Died. It walks you through (a possible use case on) how a family newspaper could be saved from going out of business using their Smart Media Token.

When will SMT's launch?

I don't know of a set date just yet. Most of what I've heard is Q2 2018 but that's very different than an actual announcement.

For More Information or to Ask Questions

It's impossible to cover every aspect of the Smart Tokens in a single guide or discussion. So to supplement this overview on SMT's...Keep an eye out for more SMT Talk podcasts! Currently I'm trying to do a 1-hour show per week covering different parts of the whitepaper and looking at projects that have announced their plan to ICO or launch an SMT.

The first three episodes focused on: