Too bad I missed this post @therealwolf... I've been working on a project that brings Smart Contracts to the Steem blockchain, but instead of running on Steem directly they run on a sidechain (which is basically a blockchain coupled to a database). The Steem blockchain is still the orchestrator of this tool as to interact with the smart contracts (deploy or execute) you need to post specific operations on Steem. In the end you get a permissioned database (because it uses the same level of authority as Steem) and decentralized (because the sidechain is just a NodeJS app that parses the Steem blockchain to perform actions, app that can be run by anyone as it is open source).
The introduction post: https://busy.org/@harpagon/steem-smart-contracts-the-sidechain-that-brings-the-power-of-smart-contracts-to-the-steem-blockchain
The GitHub repo: https://github.com/harpagon210/steemsmartcontracts