Please have a look at this recent post which partially answers your question.

Directly on topic I think that it is time for steemit to step back and leave the development to us. The way to finance it could be done similar to bitshares. There inflation is looked up in a fund and stakeholders vote on projects that this should be used for. Then these are implemented and funding is unlocked. It is an interesting idea.

We already have a similar system here in the form of witness votes. I suggest to set (passive) inflation to 0% and use this to increase witness funding. Then we as a community demand that witnesses not only maintain the chain but also commit to implementing features. We choose what we want with our votes.

Of course this can be corrupted by selling witness votes. But I think there is no way around this problem. Stakeholders need to realise that it is in their interest to fund development, especially when their stake is looked up for roughly 2 month.
People that do not contribute and hope that others do the work for them can be brought back in line when the community agrees by removing support.

But apart from all of these technicalities, I think that we are held back by the idea that steemit should do the development. We are steem, we decide and we develop. Steemit is welcome to join, but they should not have a special role.