I must toss out an alternate view.  

I've been a critic of steem-- but I hope, a "known friendly" critic.  I say this because I now feel compelled to compare to ethereum.  AFAIK, ethereum, and thus "ether" the "gas" that pays for transactions.... both do a grand total of nothing at all.  Really.  

So here's my reply on that:  I do not think that we want any of that thunder.  For more on some pretty awesome stuff, have a look into these things, comparatively:

* Graphene
* Tendermint
* Hyperledger

From my limited (but-limited-knowledge-puts-me-in the top 1% of programmers for comparative blockchain knowledge and top .001% of humans for the same) knowledge, I want to say that there are way better things on the horizon.  G, TM, and HL all share some common points.  There's an incredible discussion occurring here:  

https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos/issues/43