Over the last week or so I felt compelled to write about all the negativity I am witnessing on here. There is so much going on that it is unbelievable to me that people are whining like little schoolgirls. Sure there are problems but there is a ton to be optimistic about.
To start, I must state STEEM is not steemit and steemit is not the steem blockchain. It is imperative that people remember that they are all different entities.
Much of the complaining is about steemit. I must say that I am bullish on steemit long term. Yes there are issues yet this is common with new technology. Software is always updated and patched. That said, we also must point out that steemit is an app on the steem blockchain. That is all. It is one app of many that are being created.
Now I cannot forecast what will happen with steemit. If it does fail, it is far from the end of the world for STEEM. This blockchain is hot with activity. Each day it seems I come across another app that some creative entrepreneur developed.
Just yesterday I came across www.bescouted.com which all you photography buffs will want to check out. This is app for photographers utilizing the same rewards feature that we are quickly becoming accustomed to on this blockchain.
Here is an article I wrote about, in my opinion, one of the most promising apps on here, Zappl.
We are already seeing the commercialization of this blockchain with, to my knowledge, the first store that accepts steem.
Of course, there is DTube, Steepshot, and a host of other apps which we all use everyday. None of these are dependent upon steemit for success. Anyone of them, or all, could end up being bigger than steemit. Regardless, the fact that they are all on the same blockchain makes steem more valuable.
Now for the creme de la creme....Smart Media Tokens.
Are you aware of ERC20? This is the standard on the etherium blockchain that allowed for the creation of many tokens and the reason that etherium become the leader in ICOs on its platform. From what I understand, Smart Media Tokens can fulfill the same role except they target those sites in the "publishing" field. In other words, anyone who wants to reward content creators will be able to come to the steem blockchain and establish a coin. This is huge.
In 2017, we witnessed ETH go from about $6 to $400. At present, it is bouncing around $300 a token giving it a market cap of $28B. Steem at $100 a coin equates to a market cap that is $3B less than ETH is right now. Does that seem unrealistic to you? If it does, consider this:
The steem blockchain is quickly becoming a legitimate provider of de-centralized social media. Again, this is enormous. There are roughly 3.4 BILLION accounts on the main social media sites. Now I understand many of them are duplicates but we must also remember that 1/2 the world is not online. This will be corrected in the next 10 years. Thus, we are going to see billions entering the de-centralized social media realm and the steem blockchain could be at the core of it all.
There are many wonderful things going on with the steem blockchain. While I am very bullish on steemit, I am hyper bullish on steem. I believe that it is very realistic that a couple thousand steem will make one a millionaire. 
Step back and look at the bigger picture. Blockchain technology is penetrating every aspect of the business world It is going to be accepted as normal in the next 12-18 months. Tokens will be the norm within 3 years meaning people are going to want to be compensated for their efforts. Steem is positioned ideally to take advantage of this.
And if you are worried about this blockchain not being one of the survivors, I just want to point out that we do not yet have inter-operability in the blockchain world. Down the road, that will not be the case. The same way that the Internet went from a bunch of different programs operating on isolated computers, we will see things such as browsers able to operate on different blockchains.
My feeling is that steem will be one of the main ones people are using. The social media/publishing world is just too large.
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Pictures by google images.