The "social" experiment that has been going on since steem 4 year sgo has "failed". Can we please give up on this first? Is it crazy to strip away something that is CLEARLY not working? To salvage existing stakeholders(monetary wise) it should remove inflation and rewards from the base layer or DRASTICALLY change it.
No one wants this as a social network, it's not going to change, why would you keep a feature on a system that will never work(it's called dead weight).
So, in summary best thing in the this juncture is to take the 2-3 BEST tech features of HIVE and focus just on that!
Your claim about 1 second block times and focus on elusively smart contract is great. It's something, better then this!
If not, someone should just fork this chain and take the tech that work and focus on that. Because the system here has become too much of the same old song and dance with no witnesses other then Blocktrades it seems, to make radical changes or expirements!