The crypto market bottom (if we've even reached it yet -- there's probably another USD rate hike incoming) could stagnate for at least 3-6 months by some estimates. Are they over or under optimistic? There's a neat trick ("...that Doctors hate!"™) that works fairly well with traditional markets -- pay close attention to price movement through January, it portents the years trends. Will recovery be faster than expected? It's possible, all price movement tends to be exaggerated in the fast digital market with few physical interactions an regulation -- last Bitcoin bust lasted less than two years and that was when crypto infrastructure and public knowledge were barren.
But enough about price. Creating digital assets and services is a priority that even larger players are struggling with right now, Outside of pulling some sort of "clever trick", a "killer app" popping out of nowhere, we need some serious R&D and R&D needs funds.
So advertising is the only realistic path at the moment. It seems some social crypto has already moved in that direction, Is pure AD auctioning a good deal? Perhaps we'd be be better served with properly disclosed community sponsorships? (that would probably mean we'd need to have SMTs out already)
On another note, Steemit has been a very, extremely poor hub for STEEM UI/dApp introduction -- imagine if Google or Facebook's main page didn't link to most of the functionality of the platform available to the user? If Android didn't push its Play store with its recommended apps... That's what we basically have right now with Steemit and alternate blogging interfaces. Sure curating dApps is hard and promoting someone else's project on your front page you partly take responsibly for it, but we've had this situation of no responsibility for a very long time and it clearly didn't just work itself out.
(edit: oh dear I might have forgotten the point I wanted to make, which is:)
Either Steemit's frontend development has to become more open and converted into a portal for actively developed frontends or it must be shuttered completely to be replaced with a landing page with links to dApps.
P.S. I hope you'll pardon the injection of a protracted rant into this topic, but I felt it relevant.