I myself do not see steem block chain as being leaderless. Decentralized does not really mean leaderless, at least not to me. Until such time as other front ends get sufficient Steem Power, or sufficient witness support, or are able to put together a team of developers that will outshine the steemit crew, all I see is that Steem Block Chain the company that built steemit, that steemit is a part of, has abdicated their leadership roll and now no one is steering the ship and it is adrift at sea while other wanna be leaders, shakers and makes fight over who should have control. Meanwhile the @steem account continues to shoot steem block chain in the foot by enabling the trollish activity of meaningless down votes on peoples content thus disheartening them from making post, and leaving the platform. SMT's are not going to solve any real significant problems of Steem Block Chain, it will likely increase the issues. Right now until there is an organization (front-end) willing to take on the mantle of leadership, nothing will really change as Steemit is the controlling/deciding factor of what get fixed, what gets broke, and what gets ignored, and right now they seem to be ignoring their responsibility of the Leadership role. There is hope out there, I hear and read that steem-leo is doing well, and so is 3speak, and maybe a couple of others. Perhaps one day in 2020, they will wrest the reigns of broken leadership from steemit, and be the ones to present the next real hard fork that will improve the steem block chain.
You asked for thoughts, those are mine. Decentralized does not equal leaderless. STEEM is not leaderless, and neither is Steemit.inc, they have just abdicated their leadership and left the ship adrift while they take the last row-boat to safety.