Well, hopefully some "version" of the community will live on... perhaps even with the Steemit, Inc. employees who resigned as part of the picture... they had the vision but not the resources to get anything done.
Time will tell. For now, there has been a great sense of community, and that is cool. Justin Sun finds himself in a difficult position. He talked his "Crypto exchange friends"* into powering up Steem held in client trust accounts in order to control the witnesses... presumably on the assumption that he could fork the chain and reduce powerdown to one day. But as long as the community elected consensus witnesses stay at the top of the list... those funds will be locked up for 13 weeks.
This is where we get to discover whether decentralization really can stand up to pressure from the "conventional" way of doing business...
I truly hope so too. Change and progress is inevitable, but what is stronger than the tide is the human spirit.
It's so fishy that he wants to reduce the powerdown to one day - really lends credence to the narrative that he wishes to pump and dump.