I've heard that decentralization doesn't help with this, but I'm just not that impressed with the apps, period. Maybe if appbase or whatever else there is that's supposed to make creating apps and connecting them easier to STEEM actually works, we'll start seeing some higher quality apps with greater innovation. So far, it just seems like they're clones of what exists elsewhere, and they're like the Y2K versions. Okay, maybe not that far back, but they just feel slow, low quality and so forth.
That, I think, needs to change, before we start seeing this widespread adoption of dapps and STEEM, but I'd love to be wrong instead.
I believe that part of the problem has to do with funding/development models. A quality polished application requires a decent amount of funding. It is hard to get VC or angel funding for Steem projects because the potential user base is not perceived as high enough.
It is hard to self-fund because of the community prejudice & outrage against beneficiary rewards. I remember how upset some people were about being surprised by dtube's 25% beneficiary reward. And they all migrated to @dlive who didn't charge any because they were taking advantage of Steemit's sizable delegation to plan their exit strategy.
yeah, and someone, Dan, or somebody else from Steemit has all but said in a older blog post that the model just won't be conducive to developing apps. Which is odd given the fact that Steemit in particular seems to be depending greatly on other apps to carry the load while they work on the blockchain and SMTs. The Steemit app is still the most widely used, but Steempeak has already surpassed Steemit in many functional ways, as far as I'm concerned.
It's not going to be an easy thing, for sure, to develop apps, without some kind of funding going in. Self-funding is a hard way, too, since you have to have a decent product before people will even consider paying to use it, and since that doesn't happen much in social media, it's a different mindset all together. So, you end up limiting the user base to those who are willing to pay, and not by those who might use it if they weren't paying out potentially 50% of earnings between the beneficiaries and curation.
All of that might be solved if the price of STEEM were to go up. It's easier to giveaway all of that if you're making double or triple what you might be able to earn now.