I was so afraid of forking when Sun bought Steemit. I was certain it would all end up with people losing interest. Then Theycallmedan made me realize that I was wrong to be afraid. He simply said in one of his videos "If forking is going to kill us, then let us die already".
This is so true. If forking kills us, we were not decentralized in the first place.
My point is, yes we lost tons of people and potential. But this created an immaculate conception. We are nowhere near Bitcoin, but what other coin can claim to be as decentralized as Hive is?
This has given us even better foundation to start upon, something that has no price. We have the second best conception ever, and I would trade that for much more than what we lost.
Most of the devs we now have were mostly not working when Steemit, Inc was here. Yes we lost a great team, but now we're recruiting from the whole word. Once momentum comes back (and it will) this is going to be unstoppable.
We have so many different leaders doing different things. Communities, decentralized video, games, etc... The only thing we are lacking is maybe core devs, because it's a bit centralized with blocktrades, but that will get better hopefully.