You gave me alot to think about. Perhaps the emphasis on stake-weighted voting needs changing. I dont know for sure what is the best way to go about it.

But I can think of one problem if stakes on the blockchain are removed, specifically what then would incentivize users to gather steem and hold them as a Store of Value? You can surely agree that if there were no incentive to hold on to steem, every creators would drive views and clicks (possibly using click-farms) to their posts, get payout and immediately cashout.

As for user retention, tbh by now i can't quite care less (or perhaps i've changed my stance on "user retention/acquisition") because more than likely those who came here for quick profit alone came here for the wrong reasons and they will be the ones that leave here. You can call it maximalism, elitism whatever. But tbh i dont think we're ready for full mass adoption yet.

I don't think the steem blockchain will be the only blockchain that is relevant to the content web. Maybe another competitor will soon rise and rival against Steem's stake-based voting? Only the market will tell. Until then I'm sticking to the platform that gave me an opportunity that i otherwise would never have gotten anywere else.