Good post, mate. Regarding zappl, I can't seem to get it to work. I can't log in. It keeps saying "try again later" or something like that. Not encouraging. (EDIT: got it sorted. One of my adblockers was blocking the login).
The SMT thing is very interesting, and I'm still to wrap my head around it properly. One thing I don't get is how it relates to the STEEM currency. Isn't an SMT essentially a new crypto? If so, doesn't that take investment away from STEEM? I guess that a certain amount of steem will be needed to create the SMT, but after that, what's it's relationship?
The other worry I have is that in say 10 years we will probably have thousands of blockchains, and quite possibly hundreds of thousands of crypto coins/tokens. That makes the likelihood of any one chain/coin surviving longer term really small. Although, I do like your analogy with the early internet. I hope it does turn out to be analogous to that.
SMTs are really a protocol enabling the constructing of other tokens built upon the steem blockchain. Through there, there will be other new cryptos created for specific purposes. All these cryptos will be on the steem blockchain which will increase the value of that platform. Hence, we should see the demand for steem increase since many of the tokens will derive their value (at least initially) from steem.
As for the second part, you are correct. There will be thousands of blockchains, some public, many private...all dealing with different aspects of life. However, many of the private ones will have to be tied into the public, much akin to the internet now. Private intranets access the world wide web.
Of course, this is all conjecture since the blockchain world is still rather young....we will see how things are built out.