So far STEEM has major problems in my opinion that prevent it from realizing its potential:

1. Rewards for most of users for most of their posts are way too negligible. It discourages people from investing too much of their QUALITY time to the QUALITY posts. Even as many work their butt off for quality content it is still often worth nothing.

2. Strange perception of popularity forces those who want to be paid to post "populist junk". For example somebody posts some jokes or some silly few lines and people lose their minds upvoting it. It Feels like insane number of likes on "cat videos" and "cat pictures" on Facebook and YouTube. While somebody else invests hours or days in some serious research, spends maybe hours on writing and editing a very well-thought and deep article to be paid maybe a cent or two. Or maybe nothing.

3. You vote is worthless. Well, at least everyone's vote is worthless when they start. It does not count for anything "material". For example I had a post with 50 upvotes with the total value of... 2 CENTS! It is the same when voting for a Witness. My vote like most other people's votes will get you nowhere even in 100 years. It undermines trust in the system and it's values.

4. When new people cannot join it is a real problem. The platform is struggling to grow yet so many stories of new accounts not being opened for days, weeks or even months. Come on, in this digital age it almost takes as much time as sending snail mail letters across continent in the last century! This process could be so much simplified and bad accounts suspended if they violate the rules but give people instant access. Give them a chance. or they will lose interest and move on, being discouraged.

5. Too complex to bring any money into the system or more importantly take it out of the system. It should be way simpler for wider adoption of those who just want to blog and keep it simple.

6. Too confusing with so many metrics - STEEM, STEEM POWER, VESTS, REPUTATION, STEEM DOLLARS. Unclear relations between them so much that only a lazy Steemit user did not write some sort of FAQ about what they are, what they mean and what are the relations between them. It is not for a faint of heart simple blogger who can write brilliant content but not necessarily so much technically savvy. But without that kind of people, the platform has very serious social limitations.