Steem needs a business model.

Having a profitable business model would be nice but it's not crucial IMO. None of the other major crypto-projects (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash) has such a model and they are doing fine without it.

What is crucial however is for Steem to fully replicate Bitcoin's business model, including inflation. As long as Steem's approach to inflation diverges from Bitcoin's, there is no real-life proof that Steem's business model has a chance to work. It's all just an unproved theory, never tried before.

I still have not found a good answer to this question: why do we need inflation to stay constant? The only argument I hear is this: "Inflation needs to stay high and at a fixed level because once Steem has millions of users it will need a lot funds for rewards". But the thing Steem does not have millions of users right now and is likely to go bankrupt before it can reach this kind of traction.

In other words, I find this approach quite disconnected from reality. I wonder how much more the price needs to tank before we revise our inflation strategy. The current one is clearly not working.