Haha, great question :)! Actually I see it quite the same at this point in time (steem will wither away because the barriers of entry are so high to new users). But who am I (but a nobody)?
There will be one major change, announced for march 2019, the SMTs, Smart Media Tokens. They will change everything, maybe changing it for the better. Also some people keep repeating steemit was not build for what it is now but for what it will become with SMTs https://smt.steem.io/

Still HF20 had a desastrous impact imo for new users.
Before HF20 you could post, comment and vote as you want, only 3 second or 20 second waiting time. Only your vote may have not been possible because too low. (And some rare bandwith issues but I can't explain that, don't know how this worked.)