"The record of Golos, the earlier fork that catered to Russians, doesn't give cause for much hope."

An interesting example to take note of.

"True, it could be bought to get "Vice Power" to redirect user rewards. VICE and "Vice Dollars" could be used as a tipping coin."

One would have thought that increasing privacy, rather than decreasing it, would have been preferred for such an application to reach a large market in the current cultural context.

"unless the devs break with Steemit tradition and put paid adverts for porn on their network site."

I see no reason why they wouldn't, if it can be shown to be more profitable.

"^^ (Yes, there too.)"

Clever, but you cheated! VBD is a much harder pun.