You hit the nail on the head. The bull is certainly going to bring in more people which means the reward pool will be spread over more posts. Plus, I think SMTs are going to be adopted which means there will be a lot people earning minimal amounts of STEEM in rewards. Although not of great impact individually, if there are a couple hundred thousands taking .01-.05, that all adds up.
The SMTs are going to see SE but on a larger scale in my opinion. SE was the test case which provide the tribe (community) idea is viable.
I think they'll both do well. it depends on the use case.
I think tribes favors organized businesses where as SMTs are basically for anyone just screwin' around.
With a tribe you have your own domain and control of the website. For most SMTs you'll just be using steemit.com. So, if you manage a millenial trans furry history group then SMTs are the spot you'll want to be. If you're managing a brand I think Tribes make more sense. All that said i still imagine people will get both. Some ease of use for posting as an SMT and ease of use for trading as a SE token.
Steem-Engine smart contracts will continue to have a lot of use! I trust your team has all sorts of ideas up your sleeves, like the recently released NFT's!
STEEM can support so much great activity, that customjson layer is great, fast, free.... I wouldn't be surprised if we see even more STEEM sub-protocols by the 2022 date you mention.
For 2020 I am building '#STEEM-as-a-service' - keep building!
More actively voting Steem and more competing posts will mean less Steem per post, sure. But not $0.20 Steem = half the number of Steem... Not unless your payouts are the same. It's not directly correlative like that. I assume you know, but ... That's what it reads like.
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