New paths are being attempted, such as Utopian, Dtube, etc. I'm just not sure to what degree they'll succeed at superseding the deficiencies of Steemit though. After all, Steemit is the original proof of concept of the Steem blockchain. So long as Steemit's development lags and improvements fail to materialize, then the market's valuation of the underlying blockchain itself will remain less than its potential.