There is one huge elephant in the room: the open wallets.

There are many reasons most people wouldn't want their financial transactions on Steem to be exposed to the whole world. The number one reason is probably taxes. I'm guessing most Steemians are not paying taxes on their Steem income. Whether or not any taxes should be paid on Steem income until cashed out into fiat, until used for buying goods or services or cryptocurrencies external to the platform may be unclear, depending on jurisdiction. In any case, there is a great deal of uncertainty to this which is one reason most Steemians use a pseudonym and/or employ a number of alts that cannot be proven to be theirs. People join social media networks when they are invited to join by friends and family. This is not taking place very much among Steemians as they wish to keep their Steem identity and their walking world identity separate.

Because it is too late the redesign Steem as privacy blockchain using protocols similar to those used by Monero or Zerocoin to keep all financial transactions secret, second-tier solutions are the only possibility. It would be entirely possible to use anonymous voting accounts and placeholder posts posted by placeholder accounts and privacy chains as intermediaries to make the financial layer entirely private. The other possibility is demonetizing the Steem experience for the masses. I actually think they might prefer it that way.