It looks like Steem, and everything else sort of collapsed with the trends of ETH and BTC.

They all hit a severe [all time] low somewhere around December / Jan 1st 2020, I think.

It could dip again, but with ETH 2.0 being rolled out in the next 3 years it seems unlikely that it will decrease to those levels again. I would guess another bubble is starting.

I've heard a lot of things about the abuses in the STEEM system leading to the downfall -- sort of like a lot of gaming the system, and privitization of the reward pool, and then some malicious downvoting, and just people getting used to faboulous rewards, [like art posts worth $100 gross] and then now a good art post is worth like $7-$18 gross.

If you are used to earning $50 every time you drop a painting, and then you end up only earning $3 or $.50 it might not be that worthwhile.

The only other thing I can think of is that it is a total pain in the ass to explain to people the economics of STEEM, It's like a 20 minute lecture each time, and I don't even understand all of it.