I receive little to no love from Dan and company. I would say far too little for the hours I have spent defending them and their projects. I am not even sure he is aware that I do so, as he does not come on Bitcointalk.
I supported BTS because I think decentralized exchanges are needed. Gox, Cryptsy, Mintsy, the list of exchange defaults will continue to grow. The community just doesn't yet realize how bad a decentralized solution is needed. I would like to think that I am more forward thinking than most, and I thought people would eventually realize decentralized solutions are ideal and Bitshares would eventually be a big success. I'm still not convinced that won't happen some day. Bitshares was the first DEX-centric cryptocurrency project, and I support any cryptocurrency project aiming at solving this problem. BTCD's PAX has promise, as does SUPERNET and B&C Exchange. I will support those projects just as much, but they are all mostly vaporware, and for some reason those projects aren't trolled as much as Bitshares so there is never really a need for me to come to their defense.
I support STEEM because it is different from other cryptocurrencies with the social networking angle. It has a chance to be reach the masses more so than any other cryptocurrency. It also solves a problem that I have always thought needed solving... kicking back profits of social media web sites to the users that make them so valuable. Legacy social networks are like sweat shops, but worse considering they don't provide their users with any wages at all. There may be better social networking cryptocurrency designs, but I don't trust that they will be implemented in a sufficient amount of time... they are vaporware. Until they are actually released, I will continue to champion Steemit. Which brings me to my next point...
Dan can actually deliver working cryptocurrencies which are mostly as advertised in the road map or whitepaper. There are way too many projects to name that are perpetual vaporware. Dan has a good team that helps him too. SVK, in my opinion, can make some of the best looking modern user interfaces I have used in crypto.
Dan is also a creative and hardworking guy, as evidenced by his Github account. He is never happy with the way his project exists. He is always scheming up some way to improve them, and as I said a moment ago... he can actually deliver on the improvements and get them into a release. He always seems to come up with some good ideas as to what direction the project should go. He is dedicated to improving his projects, as evidenced by how much Bitshares improved from 0.xx releases to the Graphene release. The only reason why he left Bitshares was because the Bitshares stakeholders didn't want to fund his development efforts any more. Mainly the Chinese stakeholders were very vocal about that. I am sure he will continue working on Steemit for years to come. He is at least invested for 2 years, so I expect to see a lot of improvements during that time frame.
At the same time, I was very critical of Bitshares within the Bitshares community. There were a lot of people that don't like me over there because I was always speaking my mind, a lot of the time going against the grain of whatever groupthink was popular at the time. I defend him and his projects on here because he doesn't come here to defend himself. Which is probably a good thing, because otherwise he wouldn't be able to get much work done. I realize this post sounds obsessive or brown noseyish, but you asked why and I have now told you. I don't really care what people think about me. I honestly think he is one of the best developers in the cryptocurrency industry.