@freedompoint,

A year ago, long before Justin Sun came along, I began writing that a divorce was inevitable. Most Steemians, myself included, just want a functional social media platform. We don't care about the dreams of Dev's trying to score big in a DApp SMT ICO.

STEEM has become an alternate venture capital funding mechanism for DApp development. To many Whales, Witnesses and Dev's, it is these other projects that have become the focus of their attention.

Alas, because of their collective power (85% of SP is owned by Whales and Orcas), they were able to redirect the vast majority of the system's limited capital (SP) away from its intended purpose ... the curation of content.

There is an inherent conflict of interest. The positive feedback loops (manual curator, curation groups, Hot, Trending, third-party social media) can never get started. And hence, content creators simply cannot make a material amount of money without engaging in some form of vote manipulation.

Instead, negative feedback loops have been created. Quality content creators either leave the blockchain or refrain from creating posts that require more than 20 minutes to compose. The overall quality of content plummets making it all-but-impossible to attract new users. Who wants to consume or create crap? And yet these new users are required to soak up the newly minted additions to the money supply that occur with each distribution of the Reward Pool.

We cannot be both things and the differences are irreconcilable. It's time for a divorce.

Quill