Would a business be better off to offer SMTs instead of trading directly in Steem/SBD? At least to get started. They would be able to give out the tokens to repeat customers and then get them back, like punch cards for frequent customers. It seems like the business would have better control of their risks and expenses that way. They would set up a specific amount of SMTs to issue over time, as they wanted to expose themselves more to Steem/SBD.

For myself, I'm trying to figure out a reasonable approach for a foraging community on Steemit. It's not a topic of interest to everyone on Steemit, but it's a good test case for how to build, sustain, and reward niche communities. For many months, I curated the @foraging-trail under the SteemTrail project. Foraging wild plants and mushrooms for food is one area where expertise and being correct really matters - much more than in gardening or homesteading. If your tomato harvest is lower than usual, that's not the same as getting sick or worse from eating the wrong wild mushrooms!

Steemit has some stellar foragers and plenty of people interested in becoming foragers or better foragers. But there are also folks writing without a base of actual experience -- just copying information and photos from other places, misidentifying plants or mushrooms, and providing medical advice and then backtracking by saying don't take my advice - all wasting people's attention and potentially worse.

So a niche community centered around foraging, seems to need the Oracles and Quality Assurance roles that Ned has written about. I like @juliank's model in the photography area for encouraging contributions and engagement with other people. But moving up to different levels in foraging reputation needs vetting that's topic-specific. Folks that go outdoors to look and learn, or that connect with other folks should be able to move up easily in some action-related reputation. But moving up to something like a Master Forager level would take showing demonstrated skill in identifying and using specific plants or mushrooms.

Anyway, some of my Steemit goals for 2018 are to grow the foraging community (outside of the @foraging-trail) and offer a series of foraging courses on the blockchain. That would include using SMTs to reward people as they advance their foraging skills, and build a group of folks that can handle the Oracle and Quality Assurance roles for a growing foraging community active on the Steem blockchain. Of course, I'd like my work to be well rewarded. But I believe that foraging can help us have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.

Anyway, that's my not-fully-developed personal Steemit project for 2018. I'd be happy to talk more about it with folks that understand how Steemit communities and SMTs might work. And with folks interested in foraging!