It's going to. Or implode. Which one is more likely?
I was really, really excited about Steem and Steemit when I heard about it and started out. I had a very solid grasp of Bitcoin, and have programmed some Bitcoin stuff and thought Steem was awesome for devs. A perfect opportunity to explore some very cool computer science against some real world data and potentially make money writing software for the ecosystem. Much more interesting from my point of view, than programming against the Bitcoin blockchain. It just had a lot more data and a lot more interesting opportunities to explore.
However, I'm coming to the conclusion that the relationship between the Steem blockchain and Steemit is hurting the ecosystem. Steemit the social media site, the very specific current implementation, is driving the design of the currency and of the blockchain, instead of the other way around. This is a very serious lack of foresight.
Designing the blockchain to make the experience of Steemit better for the user base that specifically likes Steemit, results in taking away all kinds of good things about the blockchain. First to go - the idea of censorship-resistance. Due to the worry (unfounded) about bots, censorship is now in full force.
I could go on, but no one will read this anyways.
The other thing is that you can try to do something like write a library for devs to use to program against the Steem blockchain, and no one gives a crap. But boring stuff on the front page everyday gets paid. Yeah, it is boring to me. Very boring. It is very hard to find anything worth reading anymore on this site. Because the topics I care about are not getting voted up at all.
So, I think a totally separate site that catered to programmers and scientists and things like that, would be much better than trying to make a tag for a topic stand out. If you do that, then why use Steem at all? Make a new currency and a new site. It's all opensource. I don't see the benefit of trying to stick to Steem the currency.