You forgot to mention delegating your token SP to a me.excel account to be able to manage Steem VP and EXCEL VP effectively.
I agree the difficulty level is tough, and even before stepping into steem-engine.
The choice though is either to stand still or continue pushing the boundaries and for that reason i'm for SMT and steem-engine.
I don't think the only choice is to stand still or push on with tokens from whatever source. Content creators and curators, if they had the delegations dev's have had, would help attract and retain more content creators and consumers. there is massive value in alternative revenue for content creators and consumers, removing the middle man that take the bigger cut....along with censorship resistance, ownership of content and all the other benefits steem has. Im all for progression, but progression in a sustainable way.
I think you've hit a massive nail on the head here... the content creators and consumers will ultimately make this place go viral... they're the users of all of these dApps and as with any app, the content creators and consumers drive it. if they're not happy....