Thank you for sharing your insights @chitty

Offchain

What this means is that Steem´s inflation and features were specially design to reward and promote use of the social network and if something is not working as expected, then Steemit Inc can easily propose a fork to modify the whole thing,
@chitty

While Velocity has stabilized, the core issue, in my opinion, is off chain.

The social network

         Is Steemit, the first social network which is
         not social.

         Are the gatekeepers interested in people on
         Steemit?

Blockchains can have very different use cases and competition is nothing but a good thing. Nevertheless, Steem has a Blockchain that works great for Social Networks, many have already tried on Ethereum to copy steemit and have failed. It is still too early to say, but it is my opinion that Steemit will live on as the number 1 Blockchain Social Network for quite some time.
@chitty

The blockchain is social but, are the custodians of the chain social?
As the @DenmarkGuy says, "Blockchain is not exempt from human nature."