The thing is, Steem went right up to $4 after the first payout. That was a huge spike on great news. But that sort of spike is always going to trail down afterwards. That isn't any indication of a failure, it's just natural market activity, at least for a small and volatile asset. It happened to Bitcoin many times.

It seems like the Steem price might have stabilised in the last few days though. It looks like it might even rise further.

If the market cap did drop to a million, I wouldn't say that Steem was finished. But it would probably mean that Dan and Ned would have to do a lot to change the direction, to get more people interested.