Wow... I guess a lot of us are having similar thoughts @the-gorilla; I was just poking at this issue in yesterday's post, talking about giving people from outside Steemit a more valuable user experience... including an updated front end that doesn't come across as a slightly shinier 2003 web message board.

I had issues with this interface being antiquated from the moment I joined here. Five years later, it remains virtually unchanged.

SteemPeak offered a solution for many of us because it had the usability figured out, and it was under constant development. Without it, we are seriously stagnating here.

I am hoping @steemchiller will join in; I know he was working on some kind of post editor/front end at some point... and given the reliability and utility of Steemworld.org, I find myself wondering whether there is some existing work there that could be expanded to form the basis for a new Steemit front end... I know @steemchiller works awfully hard, and he has always delivered a top quality product with virtually 100% uptime.

Alas, I am not a coder, but I am certainly in support of any initiatives to pull Steemit out of the doldrums.

As a matter of "comparables," I know LeoFinance's front end was coded from scratch; there are also the more or less "turnkey" front ends offered in connection with Hive-Engine's "outposts" program...

I know the old steem-engine.net still runs, because the Splinterlands dApp still maintains at least a tenuous connection to Steem/Steemit, and if nothing else the devs might be willing to at least sell the skeleton of an alternative working codebase that could be built onto.

Just thinking out loud here...