Oh but I will join on Hive, don't worry ! :-)

It's just that my first impression was that it's a bit buggy (tried to publish using peakD and failed miserably). And the tools have not migrated yet - GINAbot will migrate on April 5 only ... Once the tool eco-system moves to Hive, it will be simply not convenient to continue using Steemit.

Coming back to the substance: absolutely, the failure of Ned and Steemit was the first step indeed. In the "centralized business world", Steemit would have simply gone under, never to be mentioned again except as a "case study" in MBA programs.

But in the blockchain world, the organizations are supposed to be more resilient because the community can step in. Especially with DPoS. Here the leadership was pretty much into the hands of the Top 20 witnesses, and it had been for a while. Ned had withdrawn after Steemfest 3, Eli Powell was invisible, totally absent ... the Top 20 had one year to steer the boat away from the iceberg ...

Yet what did they do ? HF 21 changing the cryptoeconomics (50-50, downvotes, superlinear, etc.) That was a HUGE strategic mistake.

Instead of focusing on "increasing the size of the pie", they focused on "better sharing of the pie". Never mind that the pie was shrinking as snow melts in spring ...

Let's face it: the Top 20 of Steem, now the Top 20 of Hive, might be exceptionally gifted IT experts (Anyx, gtg, Themarkymark, etc.) but they are really not up to notch on business strategy ... Hive will be going nowhere for as long as they will suffer from the Dunning-Kruger syndrome and believe that because they are smart at running computer systems they must also be capable of smart business decisions ...