I am strictly shooting from the hip and speaking my thoughts after hearing the four hours long "State of Steem Forum" (a must listen for any Steem investor - ), and I have come up with some of my thoughts.
First off it's no secret that projects need to succeed in delivering on useful Dapps; these will create demand for Steem, creating the necessary natural buyers to balance the market against the natural sellers (witnesses, cashouts). Steem has been delivering on the Dapp part; it seems a new project pops up every week. As we have seen though, having a great Dapp is not enough. There was a reason Facebook was unprofitable for a large amount of its existence. The key is having high-quality Dapps that create demand for Steem.
Natural sellers will always sell and put downward pressure on the price of Steem. And for as long as Steem has no natural buyers, the token will be treated like a hot potato to new people and will only be cashed out.
Facebook did not become Facebook because a few rich people joined. Facebook has become what it is today because of the number of people use it on a daily basis.
-Facebook gets you in the door by being free and then charges for advertisement, games, they have an online market they take a cut from, etc.
Has anyone reading this played Final Fantasy 7?
The Golden Saucer in FF7 reminds me of Steem.
Source: https://bit.ly/2Blo7C8
You need GP (currency only usable at The Golden Saucer) to use any of the rides or to do anything in the place. Steem, like an amusement park, has lots of attractions, all that requires a little bit of Steem. The confusion comes in by not being upfront with people. I believe the first 1-10 Steem a new Steemian gets should be the easiest to obtain. Make it easy enough for an average person to earn the Steem, but hard enough that a bot could not. This can be anything from proof of caring (post on social media about the project, earn one Steem, etc.) - that is marketing that new people do to earn the Steem. Notice I said earn.
The Steem blockchain also needs easy onboarding, like @steemmonsters did, the ability to buy in with fiat easily. If Steem is like an amusement park, right now it has about 300 entrances, isolated rides and no one for the love of God can find the ticket counter to purchase emission. Telling a new person that wants to join the Steem blockchain in some way to: "go buy Steem on Binance" - is like telling someone who wants to play Putt-Putt golf to go get their golf club from the moon; it just ain't happening chief. If a small-time project like Steem Monsters can make onboarding onto Steem this easy, no excuses for anyone else. Steem is like a river filled with fish; it is up to the community to build the infrastructure that makes it easy to get resources from the river. Instead of having a dock with a fishing net we are forcing people to dive in the river and catch a fish with their bare hands.
Speaking of easy onboarding and small time projects, I give you the example of NLC. I invested in a project last year called NLC (No Limit Coin) - A game of skill crypto (fantasy sports, poker, epsorts) - and they have easy onboarding via PayPal/credit card, which auto buys up the ladder on an exchange. The player gets the coin in their wallet, and they play the games. The goal is for the future to have natural demand for the coin without the players knowing they are using crypto.
I have a vision for Steem, where a page that brings every Dapp on Steem together, sort of like a Steam for Steem Dapps. People can "buy in" with a certain amount of Steem to whichever Dapp they want. The onboarding is simple, PayPal or CC connected to a backend on an exchange. @blocktrades or any exchange can be used for this. People enter the "Steam of Steem" site, and they browse around. For Steem Monsters they need a 10$ starter pack. The point is more natural demand from average non-crypto people who just want to click buy from PayPal or what have you.
If you are a freemium Dapp, find ways to make revenue from the people using the website. Make sure to give new people the ability to earn Steem with a small task that brings value back to the Dapp, full circle. Reminder: Ads are not popular, but they will be if people were being paid to watch the ads. (cough... Brave model... cough)
I have been claiming accounts and am working with some developers behind the scenes trying to play around with the best way to onboard people. You don't always have to have all the answers, but a general direction. We have the compass, and we know we need to head north. Rephrase: We have the Dapps, and we see the need to monitze them. If we keep pushing the direction things will start to look familiar, and reassurance will return.