That's fine, though it's a common place to buy votes now days & it gives returns. A part of Steem is having resources to vote, & gain rewards, so not doing either is pride or stupidity. You can still make your posts stand out whilst earning rewards, & feel good knowing you deserved those rewards. You can also use those rewards to give back. It's really free choice, so I totally understand & respect your wishes.

Yeah, promoting Steemit is good & all, but without having a real community that thrives for this place(not just for the rewards I just mentioned), whom are truly addicted to Steemit, & love posting good shit, Steemit will remain what it is; A wasteland of good, bad, & ugly blog posts with very minimal user organic user engagement. I've already said all this years ago, & hiring marketing teams hasn't helped.

I think STEEM as a blockchain could thrive if developers continue to pluck away at individual projects. I find it sad however that a lot of these projects receive no funding by the guys that conceived this fintech. That's really none of my business & leaves me personally feeling conflicted. I'm glad smart tokens can solve that, given there's enough people trading on Steem's network.