BitShares still needs a lot to succeed. The technology is there, but that's the only real plus aside from the businesspeople who are building things around it. If any of those projects are home runs, that could do huge things for BitShares. If not, it probably will struggle along and maybe it will continue to grow slowly.

The sad thing is that still no one knows about it or understands how it could make life better for them.

And the final negative is the governance, which turned into a fucking mess that crippled any sort of progress. Any major business would build their own back end or license it rather than be subject to the whims of that community. I would put my money on STEEMIT and hope that the best elements of BitShares can be combined here someday.