As you know, a number of people have recently been posting about the "meaning" of Steemit... what is this thing we're part of, anyway? You raise the important issue of how the component parts play together... which remains somewhat unclear to me.

My personal hopes (and I won't even call them "expectations") are somewhat similar to yours in the sense that I can visualize Steemit as a household name that's a viable alternative to Facebook, Reddit and all the other mainstream. I never quite saw this as a "category killer," just as a major player, perhaps somewhat niche driven in the "social blogging" arena... more of a Medium-meets-Facebook sort of thing, but more focused on alternative/independent creativity... from anarchy to art.

In their prime around 2004-05, social blogging venues like Xanga actually got up to about 30M bloggers... if Steemit reached 30M members-- with many being active-- I think that would be quite an accomplishment.

These days, my enthusiasm is slightly tempered not so much by the outbreaks of spam and the presence of botnets as by the subtext that perhaps Steemit really is more of a "sandbox" than the "star" of the show from which other initiatives are launched... and ultimately flow back to.

I'm not a tech so I have NO idea what it means to front end a social network on a blockchain, so I'm staying out of that. But as a long-time blogger and content creator I have my doubts Steemit will go very far if it's merely one of many side projects... it takes a lot of effort and time to build a social site, and if the primary users are uncertain of the venue's future... it just becomes that much harder.

I don't have any real answers here, but I am a little concerned about this possibility that Steemit (this site) will just end up floating eternally sideways without much effort to develop it further.