Great article! I agree with every point you've made.

Currently there is no incentives for anyone to add or improve any code for the blockchain itself. Ideally what we want is for blockchain coding businesses to spring up and get paid for improving the Steem Blockchain.

At the moment, anyone who adds code to the actual blockchain at worst gets completely ignored and at best gets a thank you in a blog from Steemit.

Completely agree with a trillion projects being started and abandoned.. this is a big reason why I'd be very happy with a witness vote decay. Like yourself, I absolutely agree that the Top witnesses are adding an incredible amount of value to the ecosystem... but if a whale has set and forget their votes, then there is no incentive for those witnesses to keep developing.

I wouldn't call Steem a public blockchain yet, but I really hope 2019 is the year we make that leap.

I'm not super stressed about explaining a WPS to new users... the learning curve is so steep that I imagine it's way down the list of concepts to comprehend.