I think there is too much focus on rewarding casual content. It didn't attract as much attention as we assume. Quite a few people just don't think they need to get paid for causal social media and for those who think it is a must, there seems to be a weird competitive atmosphere created.
Interesting, my perspective is we were continuously growing until there was a push away from rewarding end-users.
How would you create competition?
My idea requires SMT. Basically I would remove inflation rewards on Steem (dao, witness and SP inflation remain), and have a vote to divert it to particular SMTs to add value to those.
The vote would be based on the dao, but instead of just yes, it would be a list of SMT who meet the threshold (beat the return proposal or some set amount say 5mil SP) trying to compete for rewards based on a % of the overall vote.
Obviously I wouldn't suggest to make the change 100% of rewards immediately, but if you reserve 10% of rewards for that system to kick start it, this could be interesting. To have it accountable, someone could create a NO vote and if it is ahead of the yes vote, they are removed even if it beats the return amount.
After this is set up internal community inflation distribution is up to the community. It could be limited to SMTs that meet certain conditions (ie. they need to choose variables that qualify), but it would create value for those SMTs.