I can't speak of the technical side because I am not a technical person but I completely agree with your (non) investment thesis here.
I don't think Steem will ever reach mass (or even decent) adoption because:
- the new RC system is a dumpster fire which favors those with large amounts of SP because it prevents newbies to do basic things like posting and commenting without being delegated SP
- Steem reward system has always been unfair and favors a small group of early investors who drain the reward pool and up-vote each other
- Steem doesn't have a decent suite of analytic tools
- poor user experience ie inability to edit articles commited to the blockchain
- spamming
I've been powering down for a few weeks now and I intend on cashing out and keeping just enough SP to being able to post and stuff but I sure won't put my money into this project.
Steem never required mass adoption for the crypto to succeed, it still doesn't. These were all points people like to talk about and dream about, but I never found them relevant to what Steem can actually deliver to us for value.
SMT's are/were the solution to SP conglomeration, people just build an alt-community on a different SMT and find a website which governs according to the SMT, not Steem. People would just need the bare minimum SP to transact on blockchain, but rewards would be tied to the SMT.