In the past week a lot has been written about Steemit Inc. and even “the demise of STEEM”, the latter which is of course rather exaggerated since we are in a decentralized environment. After taking my time to develop some thoughts about everything - rather than immediately jump on the social media megaphone bandwagon - I am none the wiser since, none the wiser in the sense that I can’t say my thoughts have particularly changed.
With the exception maybe that the situation for Steemit Inc. may be more precarious than admitted, especiallly given how close after SteemFest3 everything was announced. Maybe, next SteemFest, 
Thus, my thoughts, in rather random and not too detailed version.
The 800lbs. Gorilla is Hurt
In a decentralized environment it is always negative to have few players who “centralize” most things. Obviously, for months - few years even - this has also been the fault of the community by constantly talking to/directing everything at Ned and for many to even wait for Steemit Inc. to make everything happen, or not. Given financial situation, Steemit Inc. currently can not further spearhead the community as it has done so far and future roadmaps and deliverables may suffer from this.
This is a good thing.
The fact that Steemit Inc. is in a more vulnerable position right now means that the community must refocus, refocus on actually becoming an active participant in the infrastructural environment. This also means that more dev activity will be required from the dev community (and witnesses) on blockchain level.
While Steemit Inc. have done rather OK supporting new initiatives - and have shown in that aspect to be great “guardians” for the STEEM ecosystem - for Steem to develop in a healthy way it is primordial that Steemit Inc. will be challenged ALSO on their role as blockchain developers.
That’s decentralization for you, for us... for everyone.
Bonus: with given financial struggles at house Steemit Inc., it is also of utmost importance that the near future focus switches to optimization of the platform. This needs to happen on multiple levels. While I appreciate that (belatedly) Steemit Inc. decided to switch to RockDB... who can tell the community that it was also the right infrastructural decision?
Again... decentralized thinking.
Looking at the current requirements, and also earnings, for witnesses... nobody is gonna host a node - or even want to be a witness with redundancy setup - if Steem scales to 2 million daily users. Already now the requirements are ridiculous and we barely have any daily activity which truly registers on the scale. 10-15k daily users is admirable but is also rather common in this modern mobile era.
In the blockchain world it may be among the leading platforms but on a larger scale it is merely a blip on the radar. A very small dot.
We Need to Find a Product-Market Fit. Two Product-Market Fits.
As a decentralized infrastructure blockchain environment, AKA Web3.0, the Steem ecosystem needs two things: developers and Steemians. Steem is a base layer blockchain and is perfectly positioned for apps to build on top.
So far several apps, with or without Steemit Inc. delegation, have managed to gain large traction already. Large being relative to the Steem ecosystem and also compared to the dApps environment on other blockchains. Obviously, those with delegation managed to grow larger communities because that’s how Steem has functioned, too many think only rewards currently.
Yet, we now need more flagship apps. Which requires developers. Without more developers and definitely more high level SteemApps - dare we say SMTs - there is nothing left here on Steem. Product-market fit 1.
Nothing more than a philanthropic “basic income alike automated” platform with only very little for investors.
ONCE we have more outwards showworthy apps, then we can focus on attracting more Steemians. In fact, the apps will attract more users. Product-market fit 2.
Eventually, and that has started already, apps will start to enter the Witness Top 20 and at some point may even become large enough to be “the consensus”. Combined with some solid infrastructure thinking witnesses and one or two community focused witness ONLY THEN will the Steem blockchain truly start to evolve as a long term solution.
Pretty much similar to the oh so snorted at nowadays, and slow, W3C but it are organizations like that which think “for everyone” and for the future of everyone. SteemApps as “governance” will all have a long term focus, many of which even with common users. That overlap will unite them in how they make consensus decisions.
What About @Ned?
To be entirely honest, I think Ned has done many right things. At the same time, there’s no denying that he should whether start to display a certain degree of #flearn humility or take some more (virtual) baseball bats to the head.
Even decentralized communities generally tend to work best with a “Benevolent Dictator”, examples abound. The most popular one probably being WordPress.org where things tend to go better each time Matt once again says that he will lead the next release hands on. Bitcoin tends to have outspoken and vocal top devs, Apache.org is a meritocracy which is at the same time also rather political yet it works. And, of course, there’s still Linus.
Could Ned be that “Benevolent Dictator”?
At this time there are serious doubts about that. But what isn’t can still be. After all he has a great vision with “rewarding content creation” of all types and despite much which can be criticized he could possibly be the right “Admiral” - admiral, to use 
But that will require much work because right now, the main mantra is to challenge Steemit Inc.’s role and position on every single level.
That is what decentralization requires us as a community to do.
TL;DR
For all that the financial position of STEEM currently looks rather pitiful, everything right now happening is a good thing for the Steem community.
A good thing because everyone now should have realized that in decentralized environments it is not healthy to rely on one centralized party.
Here’s hoping that will still be remembered when the next HardFork is shipped.
PS: 
Consensus is even not needed, you can operate your own node software and make it available via a public repo.
That’d decentralized.