Obviously, I make this statement ignoring the FUD about cryptocurrency and the market pricing throughout the year. On that front, it was brutal. The bear was out in full force.
Even that has a silver lining.
Part of my reason for stating 2019 will be even better is the fact that I think confidence in the platform never has been higher. We hit a few bumps the last couple months of the year, the biggest being Steemit Inc's bombshell of having to lay of 70% of the workforce. Nevertheless, those who are on here are very optimistic about the platform.
In looking at 
https://busy.org/@penguinpablo/weekly-steem-stats-report-monday-december-24-2018
If you notice, it was almost two months since we saw a week of net powering down. Through it all, more was "invested" in the Steem ecosystem. The silver lining I mentioned was the cheap price of STEEM. This allowed many to power up inexpensively compared to where things were earlier in the year.
We witnessed a "rallying" of the community after the Steemit Inc news. This was very encouraging in my opinion. Even Steemit, itself, being more focused, might increase the impact it makes. Ridding itself of social media responsibilities while concentrating resources on the blockchain could benefit all of us.
This means there is more focus upon the applications. Steemit is taking care of the blockchain, the DApp are the secondary layer. Thanks to the efforts of a couple Steemians, we have some tools to monitor what is going on while also drawing some attention to Steem.
The State of the DApps is still working itself out. I surmise since Steem apps were only added a couple of weeks ago, we will see it take some time for the numbers to even out. That said, we are making a good showing early. This is something we need to keep pushing. Using the applications and spreading word about them is crucial.
Right now 9 apps are listed in the top 50 with 
Looking over the entire list of Steem applications listed on that site, I know a number of them were not even around at the beginning of the year. I believe we will see an even larger jump in terms of the development in 2019. A lot of these applications have major plans and are getting close to a few breakthroughs. 2018 was the year of laying a foundation with the code. Now they are moving to more advanced levels with their plans.
I know many feel I am just am optimistic cheerleader for Steem. However, I do try to back up my outlook with the evidence of what is taking place. Sure, at this time, there is still a lot of conjecture involved. Nevertheless, it does not take genius skills to see how far we advanced on here in the past 6 months in spite of the FUD that, in part, drove prices down.
https://busy.org/@exyle/which-app-will-overtake-steemit-com-in-2019-my-guess-steem-monsters
This is a solid guess.
I will take a different approach. Looking at the growth we saw in the cryptocurrency world this year in terms of users (about doubled) and the development that is taking place, my answer is we have not seen the application yet.
My guess is the number 1 Steem based application by the end of the year is not even in existence yet. There is something that will appear in the first half of the year that captures attention and goes "viral".
While that might seem a bit odd to say, keep in mind that the EOS based applications are no more than 7 months old since that blockchain did not go live until June. Things can change very quickly.
Of course, this is no disrespect to Steemmonsters and the team there. They are creating a wonderful product that is growing by leaps and bounds. My estimation is based on the idea that we are getting close to the time when an application can come out and start being used by tens of thousands of people in a short period of time. In the online world, an application like that is still small potatoes.
As the year comes to a close, we are gearing up for 2019. This is going to be an even better year for Steem than 2018 saw.
This is still a hidden gem in the blockchain world.
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