In a lot of ways, we are still on track for World Domination. We've had some setbacks, but we're still making progress.
Once you have a highly functional currency, a robust community and market place, and lots of content to bring in new users, you are ready to start building robust smart contracts and side chains around these assets.
Turns out, a lot of this stuff can be done in parallel or in spite of other stuff not coming together. E.g., strictly speaking, we don't really need a functioning native peg. Sure, it's nice to have, but not a requirement to launch sidechains.
The STEEM asset is stable enough to support "layer 2" soft-consensus. Stuff like that.