<a href="https://musing.io/q/oduoye/f3b7ukwx5"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/fcS8JH2.jpg" /></a><br />There was a referral system set up on busy.org about four months ago with the aim of bringing more people to the busy.org platform. Under the program you receive 10% of the rewards of the new member for a period of 30 days. 

There was quite a lot of discussion around the idea at this point. One concern of users who were against the idea was that referral programs were scammy and gave a bad impression (I can see this - the ones for binance on twitter are annoying). Users in favour noted that the Steem blockchain needs user growth if Steem is to be more succesfull.

My guess is that after:
(a) user sign-up is fast-track and 
(b) SMTs are launched
then we will see referral programs set up for people joining Steemit, set up by the individuals running the SMTs with the referral rewards paid in SMTs. SMTs have the potential to bring all kinds of innovation and competition in reward structures.