Great and informative post! Up-voted and followed. I agree that we need some real world applications where Steem can be used to buy / sell things. In one of my last posts I suggested an Online Tutorial site where various content could be purchased with Steem (Similar to Udemy, Lynda).
The comments from @snowflake also make a lot of sense to me regarding
- Reducing the lock period
- Provide more / better marketing (e.g. like Amanda is doing for Dash) and
- Probably get rid of SBD and SteemPower and just hold Steem.
It would be great if someone from Steem.Inc could provide their opinion on these points.