Hi @abh12345! Congratulations on the delegation and on getting so many from the Leagues "seen." I think Steemit does potentially have a big future, and thanks to people like you, we can create that future.

Let's face it, the idea of a decentralized social content platform is pretty new, so nobody's here with a bunch pf previous wisdom and experience.

We're now two years in, and something that's not specific to Steemit — but perhaps is common to startups in the broader sense — is that we are entering a "changing of the guard" stage. The founders and early investors are gradually going to give way to more "day-to-day operators."

A lot of people shed tears when @dan left Steemit for greener pastures. But Dan isn't a "nuts and bolts guy," he's a "mad genius" who invents things and then goes on and invents other things. Similarly "Builders" (aka, many of the earliest people here) aren't "maintainers." That manifests in what many currently see as a tendency by the "old guard" to want to just build apps and SMTs and what have you, while caring relatively little about the community and content and such. Again, it's not really their original gig.

Something to keep in mind here is that perhaps things move more slowly with Steemit because we come from a world where we are accustomed to an organizational structure where there is a "they" who take the lead. Here, there is no "they;" WE are the "they."

The evolution of Steemit is slowly happening and we can see it (for example) through the recent and current rise in what we might call "community based" witnesses. That is, witnesses whose focus is — like your own — deeply engaged in creating a content and community oriented platform for the long run.

This isn't to say that ALL the originators of Steemit are "bad!" For example, you have amazing people like @fulltimegeek and @krnel whose visions extend well beyond "Well, we built it... now what?"

@krnel, in particular, has rallied against bots and automation, against "circle jerks," and FOR community and quality content almost since the beginning; often making a lot of enemies (among the Old Guard) in the process.

We have the capacity to shape this platform. Sure, it may seem daunting when we don't arrive here with 500,000SP in pocket... but consider the influence of a "community witness" (or a whole group of them) each backed by the votes of 10,000 well-informed minnows rather than 50 whales! Which means grassroots education and rallying around the importance of witnesses and voting... from the ground up. Posts outlining just who ARE the "community oriented" witnesses, pumped through on a regular basis... there's no "taking over" by pushing others out of the way, but simply by growing bigger than them.

Sorry, went a bit overboard here... but this was a very encouraging post!

=^..^=