Is it good, is it bad? It is great, of course! The more spotlight the better! And I meant "scrutiny" in a good way...
It probably started with the news of the layoffs at Steemit Inc. which, as all bad news, had a wide media coverage.
What was probably surprising to the outside world, was the fact that community stepped up immediately looking for and offering alternative solutions. STEEM price didn't crash either, so there wasn't too much panic selling.
So Steem has the vote of confidence of its core community, even when unexpected bad news hit? That must be something...
Some events followed.
An offer came to take on the RockDB implementation from one of the top and deeply involved witnesses, 
Three concurrent projects related to creation of tokens are in development by three teams from the community, as a backup to SMTs, while Steemit Inc. still promised an early SMT-lite version.
@Partiko takes a challenge head on to backup and onboard any willing Tumblr user that was affected by a recent ban. At a recent count there were almost 60k requests to backup their blogs and port them to Partiko, thus to Steem.
This is more into the rumor territory before confirmed officially by 
For example, I know
is talking to a major global company that everyone on here will know. I was taken aback when I was told the name because I did not realize they were in the wearable industry. Of course, I am not an expert on that market so there are many involved I am not aware of. The point is this company is not only interested in integrating the Actifit application into their products but also, possibly using the AFIT token for some things.
We will see how it goes and if we get an announcement from them about that.
Now, these kind of talks are usually pretty sensitive, so I don't want to speculate on this. But the least what this means is that Actifit draw some very curious, powerful eyes in their direction (they also received a huge delegation from freedom, and a witness vote from pumpkin after SteemFest 3).
If these eyes are from outside Steem, it is likely they heard about or noticed Steem for the first time too via Actifit.
I heard somewhere 2018 will be the year of dapps on Steem. Said in 2017 or at the beginning of 2018. And it was true.
So yes we are no longer in Top 50 cryptos by market cap. This is not good, but can change radically in one week if STEEM spikes. What is important is that eyes still curiously look at the opportunities offered by the Steem blockchain. The more visible we are, the more likelier to be discovered.
I've just seen today and resteemed a post of 
What will 2019 be known for? Sound business models? Expansion beyond crypto world? If @dStors will be a success, we'll have a great example of both. But there are a handful of projects that I think will have a great impact in 2019. Wish there will be more, much more!