Steemit is not a one man cult of personality. It will take a lot more than one well known person leaving to sink her. Steemit is still better than Facebook and Bitcoin put together. If we can maintain our calm and keep going, there is no reason at all that Steemit can't still succeed. I'm hardly the normal voice of encouragement, but this is not over yet, not by a long shot.
Indeed, but @ned has been the face of Steem more than anyone else anyway. I dunno if Dan is like me with projects - sometimes you just go 'ok, this is a mess, I'm starting over again'. He'll go on to do something else new, and hopefully there is enough of a functioning governance system in Steem that this in fact will be remembered as the moment that the stops were all pulled out and the music started to really play!
I don't worry about it 'going to zero'. It's not going to go to zero. There's too much people with too much stake in it. It just may take a little attrition to clear the executive gridlock that (in my opinion) has been plaguing Steem for the last few months.
The poor implementation of 'the experiment' has caused more damage than anything else lately. I wish Dan well, and hope it doesn't discourage too many people, but it looks like he accomplished what he could with all of us unruly monkeys. I wasn't hoping for a philosopher king, and I'm happy that he has enough sense to not try to be one. Steem on! De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
The ship won't sink, but the freedom-flag it was flying has been burned (months ago):
How steemit became useless to freedom-fighters
It became a ship that flies nothing but a big dollar sign flag.
Freedom-fighters and whistle-blowers were forced out when #steemit decided to impose mobile number disclosure for account creation. Assuming @dan not the same person as @dantheman, I hope @dan goes on to create a freedom-respecting blockchain blogging tool (we need one).
As far as I know, they are one and the same.
The dollar sign flag was a mistake. This is still in beta. People are moving in and setting up their livelihoods around an untested product that still catches on fire, and spits out hordes of gremlins occasionally. This should be seen as a MMORPG with real consequences for the individual's investment. We're nowhere near a sustainably growing configuration. We're still at the point of a few zero sum gamers letting all the investment of time and money out, so they can take it home with them, and leave all of the rest wondering what happened. The money-stake people need to respect the time-quality investment stake people or this is never going to work. If there is a way to incentivize this, Steemit might make it to next month.
I'm HERE!
Sorry it took me so long...
Que?
Another Steemian steps up to the plate!