Thanks for the thoughtful comment and share @jerrytsuseer.

It seems to be part and parcel of the genre that sites are more likely to "go poof" than stay around. The crypto social model is new, and has the essential difference that the rewards don't come in the form of dollars and cents, but a token that is given its value by the open market. And so there is nobody to go bankrupt. Sure, the token can become worth less than a Dogecoin... but there's continuation.

To be honest, I was continually surprised by the resilience of Steem; it's ability to move beyond the onslaughts of scammers and spammers. However, we are not exempt from the vagaries of human nature just because "we're on the blockchain." There's a sort of myopic idealism present in this industry that seems to ignore the fact that greedy buggers will always be greedy buggers, no matter where they are.