Actually I do still have fun in the social aspect of it. Comment voting, yes that has taken a sever back burner position (due to vote value and dust vote level), but I see a lot of comments on post, on plain ordinary post, not just post about the state of steem.

I still see fun post being made, I see life post being made, and yes, the down votes are an issue.

I myself do not think anyone is going to benefit from the HF. I think in six months they will be thinking "what were we thinking". I am going to stay around to see the fall out of it all though.

SMT's and Down votes pool are not going to mix well at all. SMT's are designed to bring business in, down vote pool is designed to shut people down. SMT's could really have so much potential, but they will never work as long as their is abusive down voting going on, and free down votes will add to that abusive nature.

SMT potential that will not be seen while down votes run rampant and free:

Betty has a small boutique shop for luxury bath items and beauty aids. her clientele are upper middle class business women. She would like to reward her repeat customers, she see's a post about SMT's and thinks this sounds interesting, a quick easy coin/token that she can use as a reward mechanism. A perfect method of giving back to her loyal customers. Then she looks a little deeper, and needs to be able to make a Steem account for her customers that do not have one, then provide some Steem so her customers can access the token. Not totally overcome able road block she thinks, then she looks and sees all the down voting, she talks to one of her customers that she knows has a steem account and ... well she learns about the abusive nature of several small, medium and large accounts. ....

So no new SMT user, a lost opportunity. No business wants to put their clientele in jeopardy. So it is going to be very interesting to see just how long this down vote pool idea will last.