To be honest, down the road both efforts can still merge. As noted Steemhunt’s plan is to first go via a ERC-20, which IMHO also seems a smart solution for their roadmap. ERC-20 has been tried and tested already. Steem Engine, is a proof of concept right now and that alone may not be sufficient for founders to develop on, and maybe even for exchanges to already consider. Especially not as long as there’s no consensus mechanics.
Down the road Steemhunt will convert again to SMT token. Which protocol, smart contract, sidechain is used then... may the best and most solid option win. As mentioned in the announcement, this is for temporary token pairing already. A token smart contract provider can be developed at the same time, these things are not mutually exclusive. No, there were hundreds of spam filtering solutions.
Let’s not centralize on only one option... we should know better by now. The internet didn’t grow with only one solution for everything either.
Not wanting to be negative here, I believe in Steem but it is high time that Steem starts to look outwards too. Always within the same circle doesn’t necessarily result in any influx [of investors].
Imagine that this works then by the time Steem Engine is properly tried and tested, functional with everything in place there is also an exchange which has already embraced STEEM pairing. How awesome would that be? Why wait, let’s have multiple parallel efforts and not focus on just one.