If you really care so much about this platform and the community you should:
- Sell a part of the company to a crypto enthusiast who will take care of the further upgrades on the platform (it wont be worse than the current upgrades, that's for sure) and let him make this platform a much better one.
- Run ads to cover the costs for workers, marketing etc. Because if you depend only on cryptocurrency price you will get nowhere, we still don't know how deep the dip is, it may even get worse, can you allow your company a 0.05-0.10$ per steem?
If you ask me, I would go for the first option, because your team didn't do much of a difference to be honest and after two years from Steemit creation you are already on the rope, so I don't think you can save this one with your current plans, maybe you have the mindset but you lack the experience and money. We all know that word of mouth marketing lead us nowhere on Steemit, it's time to put your ego aside and behave like a real professional businessman. I hope Steemit will survive this and improve a lot in the following years. Maybe ask for support from Dan, I know that you guys are enemies but this was a project created by the two of you, I am sure he can help.