Great post @krnel. These are the kinds of discussions we need more of. All the discussions recently have been around distribution of rewards, but without investors, eventually there will be no rewards to speak of.

For me, the two biggest things are:

1. The platform needs to develop ways of generating revenue – through advertising, sponsorships, market places etc. At the end of last year, @ned mentioned looking at introducing advertising on Steemit. Does anyone know what’s happened with that idea? @ned, are you able to provide an update on this?
2. Steem is more than a blogging site and more than Steemit. For me, the most urgent need is to develop on and off ramps between Steem and fiat. We need to make it easy for people to purchase Steem using credit cards. Zero transaction fees and fast transactions. We need to utilise these features! Remittances and international money transfers. These are markets we can tap!