There were a couple posts of late that delved into this area. Sadly, many people want to focus upon what is wrong at the present moment. Personally, I feel that a great deal of what people point to as shortcomings really will not be much of a factor going forward. In fact, we are already seeing ways that things are evolving.
Here are a few of the issues that people point to:
To me, this is one of that naturally going to be corrected. Things are changing and more accounts are receiving tokens. If one comes on here and participates, more tokens end up in that wallet. It is really that simple.
Here is something I want everyone to think about: What did the token distribution look like in March of 2016? How many accounts were there? At that time, most everything was in a few accounts.
Another part of the same thought process: July 4th, 2016 is the first time tokens were distributed by the blockchain. Before that, all tokens came from Steemit. How is that for a lack of token distribution?
People think what is taking place on here is unnatural. It is not. Look at EOS. This is a blockchain that had a 300+ day ICO and I read that 50% of the tokens are in 10 wallets. The ICO raised $4B and half is in 10 wallets (nobody knows how many own those 10; it might be 2 or 3 people). EOS had such a long ICO to try and get the tokens to as many people as possible yet this is the breakdown.
STEEM has a lot of tokens in the hands of investors. Again, that is natural. Part of the process is people who buy in. Most applications on here are looking for the same thing. They need investors and are willing to give tokens in return. The thing about investors is they are concerned about getting a return. Do you know what that means? It means there comes a point where the price will rise enough that they will sell out. Even simply risk management means one should mitigate the risk by taking some profits out. This means those tokens end up on the open market being bought by a variety of people, spreading the distribution out even more.
At the same time, the reward system is churning out tokens every day. (more on this later).
This really falls into the "not imporant" category. To me, leave STEEM at your own risk. In my opinion, those who leave are going to be kicking themselves for doing it. But that is neither here nor there. The more important question is why are these accounts inactive? This is impossible to answer completely but I surmise it has a lot to do with the sign up process. It can take up to two weeks to get approved. TWO WEEKS? Who is going to wait that long for approval and use a site such as this? Very few.
Another aspect to this is that many are led by people on FB and YT espousing the idea that one can make a millions dollars in just 3 posts. The get rich quick idea is being pushed which sets people up with false expectations. So, of course, people leave when they get .02 instead of $1,000.
The final reason could be because of the drop in cryptocurrency pricing. When prices drop, people stop participating. It is counter-intuitive but that is what they do. When a bull market takes over, some of those people will be back wondering why it is so much harder to earn SP.
Many feel this is a problem, that it shouldn't be done. For some reason, they do not think there will be growth if this happens. I disagree.
This is a failure to see the major shift that is taking place towards the masses.
The simple fact of the matter is there is about 50K people on here a day. That is all. This is an insignificant amount of people.
What is the future of STEEM? Tens of millions of people instead of 50K. Why do I not care about the amount of inactive accounts? Because there are 3.4B people online in the world and there are going to be applications on this blockchain that get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, to sign up.
This is also why the distribution of STEEM is not a concern. With that many people on the blockchain, using their favorite application, the reward pool is going to be completely overwhelmed. It is likely we see apps with a hundred thousands daily users all upvoting different stuff. That will take the reward pool and dilute it a great deal.
STEEM is NOT only a place for bloggers. Steemit is a blogging application along with a few others. There are many who talk about quality content yet want STEEM to grow. The numbers that will be arriving are not professional bloggers who put up quality content. Those days are going to be ending.
What we will see is people having fun on the STEEM blockchain. People like to post videos of their fat uncle snoring. They post pics of their big toe or of a butt at the gym. People like posting links to content they enjoy and find goofy. They share short posts about basically nothing and have long conversations about it. That is what the internet is.
STEEM will have a bunch of teen-age girls using an application that allows them to go back and forth about someone's hair in school. And the entire time they will be upvoting each other and drawing rewards.
We will have the serious, the dopey, the inane, and the truly magnificent on here. The entire spectrum will be covered. And it will be wonderful because the entire time the STEEM ecosystem will be getting stronger.
Larger accounts are already delegating huge amounts to different applications. It will continue. This is where the highest voting power will come from. These accounts will upvote those on their own platform drawing even more rewards away from the self and circle voters. "Raping the reward pool" will not net one much with that many people drawing from it. There will come a day when the trending page might be $5.00. This will be the case if the entire STEEM blockchain hits the user base of Reddit (about 250M monthly active users).
It is easy to focus upon the negative. With such a small community, a few bad apples stand out. That is not going to be the case going forward. Hard Fork 20 might be the move that starts the ball rolling. A streamlined sign up process will allow the ranks to grow quickly and people to get started immediately. This is a big difference from what we experience at the present moment.
For me, it think to many people are focused upon STEEM as a small pond. Instead, take a look at it as an ocean. Things are a lot different when you have 5M active users versus 50K. And online, that is still a small number.
Ultimately, Steemit, as an application, might fade away. It will still be here but it is an outdated, uninteresting application. There are interfaces that offer more and look a lot better. Look at the success of Busy.org; 
It is the applications that will be important. That is what will draw the users here. It is also what will keep them here. People will be earning STEEM as a secondary token, at least in their minds. They simply will be earning the token for their favorite app. Of course, the STEEM earned will have enormous value since it is still the main token on the blockchain. Since all bandwidth will be priced in it, STEEM will be needed. As the users increase and the rewards diminish per post, this is going to force prices up. The scarcity will mean that each STEEM has great value.
And what will people do with their STEEM. Many will have a chance to spend it. At some point, we will see a phase where many of the applications built have commerce tied to them. Busy.org is already working on this. Commerce is going to be a part of the STEEM blockchain. People will not have to convert their STEEM to fiat to purchase things. It all will be done right on here.
That is how I view the future of STEEM.
Personally, I think it is one of the most exciting things out there.
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