I think if we can successfully align good content, even very roughly, with rewards and exposure, we'll likely be one of the most successful platforms out there as we offer a very direct way for creative content to be rewarded, which is lacking elsewhere.
This would also draw non content creators here just by virtue of what we have to offer in terms of content. Hopefully this will all translate into a larger ecosystem and higher steem $.
Whatever the case, having a completely dysfunctional content discovery/rewards system can't be helping our price, even if market behavior is sporadic and random in the short term, I believe it reflects the underlying value and utility of the platform in the long term. A working content discovery and rewards system is more valuable than a failure of one.
More can be improved too. The promoted section for example is being wasted when it could actually do something helpful for the ecosystem. Ads could be built into Steem UI and then people wouldn't have to buy exposure by other means.
I suggested it once that the promoted feature could be changed in a such a way that the SBD used to promote a post would just push a post up to the trending page.
So, let's say I put 50 SBD into a post. That 50 SBD would show as $50 in the post payout. And so on. There are people who put a lot of money into promoting their posts, even though the gained benefit is rather low.
This SBD getting burned wouldn't exactly hurt anyone. And it would give a reason for someone like me, who isn't that big of a fan of handing money to the bot owners who are partially responsible for turning Steemit into the anti-social media, to promote my posts to the trending page more.
Here is my old post about it.