You seem to be right, since I came here in the beginning of 2018, all I've seen was my investment turning to dust, while whales keep circle-jerking and STINC just talks and does nothing else.
There is no real correlation between the value of STEEM and the so-called quality of content (spoiler: it's shit in 95% of cases) that is advocated so much. No paid votes - no exposure - waste of time - creators leave. By now I wish I never came.
How can we expect this place to explode and go viral when new users can't even register easily? I invited some of my friends to join and each and every one run into a registration problem, I even had to buy one account myself after weeks of waiting. At the same time, bots come in in hundreds. It is so easy to fix (I'm saying that as a programmer), yet STINC have done nothing but putting a caption that a free registration means waiting for a couple of weeks. They still manage to fail to fix it.
How can we explain that, besides calling them what they are - amateurs, incompetent and uninterested in the accomplishing the goals.
Now they promise SMTs, communities, hivemind, you name it. Look at this, almost 5 months ago they were "about to introduce" those changes and they still haven't.
I'd really like to believe that success is just around the corner, but crypto space just keeps disappointing, especially steemit.