I read the white paper. STEEM began as a Smart Media Token. As I understand the idea was to create a token that could fund multiple web sites.

This web site, SteemIt, was designed around VESTS. When you "power up" you convert STEEM into VESTS.

SBD is an attempt to create a free floating crypto currency that is pegged to the dollar. They discovered that this very difficult to accomplish.

So, I guess he is back to trying the original plan.

As for the large number of media tokens, when you get down to it, it is absurd for any company to build a platform based on the crypto from another platform because it creates a very dangerous dependency.

The crypto world will end up reflecting the complex relations between different companies. There really isn't a way to simplify. The best hope to that people create structures that allow the users to understand the relations.