I've been here for 1 year and 3 months. I have seen and experienced all the phases you quoted above. I remember a hard fork where we spent weeks with 0 in payments for our posts. It was painful. What many are complaining about or being realistic (not pessimistic) where I include myself is the fact that a lot here has changed for the worse in the sense of rewards and interaction.

In rewards, we do not win more whale votes naturally, we have to buy votes on vote-buying projects, and with respect to interaction, it no longer exists on the platform. Nobody comments, no one votes and the spammers and bots have grown a lot here. This makes me sad, upset because it was not this Steemit I met and I want to stay here for many years.