it's good news that immediately we have more capable people talking about full nodes and other solutions to keep steem and the community going (afterall i'm sure it's why we love decentralization in the first place). what's acting as the 'biggest barrier' for that 'killer app' is ned himself, but he's blaming everything else and still thinks he should be the one who's in charge of building it (when it's proven that he doesn't have the dev/sales/management/or other skills that are necessary).

communities and dapps shouldn't even be his concern. he should've focused down on providing the api and let someone else figure it out. he's always been talking about 'wisdom of the crowd' but never cared to listen. (listening to himself in an echo chamber doesn't count)

there's been many signs. to me, when he talked about whitelisting/blacklisting individuals based on his criteria of what a 'good person' is (the very fact that he used those words), i realized he was a ticking timebomb. i applaud his insight in jumping into crypto space early and creating this platform, but now it's time for him to step back.

the fact that he's the biggest stakeholder (millions and millions of steem) but chooses to sacrifice his employees instead of himself proves that he has desires to remain in control and hold on to power. it's not going to be an easy transition even if this community includes many individuals/companies that can address some of the immediate concerns.

on one hand i see steemit inc's downsizing as good news. if steemit inc, steemit.com, api.steemit.com all goes under because they can't manage the costs, it'll be an opportunity (a test rather..) for steem to move closer to decentralization. ned is the biggest barrier. he's gonna do everything in his power (except giving up his stake) to prevent someone else from leading.

if this bear market continues he might be forced to give up (might as well be the best case scenario). if the market turns around quickly, we're gonna be back to square one where he continues to be the unqualified point force, a bottleneck. another possibility is where he grows humility and realizes no single individual (including himself) is capable of creating a perfect solution. but from what we've seen so far, that's very unlikely.