The only way to convince anyone to want to be a part of Steem is to make Steem's value proposition irresistible. There are many many ways of doing that. Here are a few examples of features that would make Steem a much more attractive platform:
- decentralized market place (already discussed, but no clear timelines so far)
- crowdfunding plateform
- allow user issued assets (tokens, gateway IOUs)
- diversify market pegged currencies
- develop the internal market to become a full fledged decentralized exchange for #3 and #4
#2 can be implemented easily on top of the existing post reward system, as explained in an earlier comment.
#3, #4 and #5 exist already in Bitshares. A merger should be considered (I am also a Bitshares holder and would be favorable to seeing a merger). If Bitshares community isn't interested by a merger, turning Bitshares into a Steem sidechain would do the trick and be mutually beneficial for both ecosystem. And if all efforts fail to negociate a deal with the Bitshares community, Steem should just move on and replicate what is good in Bitshares.
The above would help Steem to be considered as a serious crypto currency in the crypto space, and not just a flash in the pan. Since speculators are essentially coming from the crypto space, being considered a major crypto alongside Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum is key to attracting capital.
RE: crowdfunding
This is exactly how I've been using Steemit already. (You can read on my blog, if interested.) I think there is a lot of potential for this idea and donations don't even have to come out of someone's own pocket, so there's essentially no risk for those wanting to fund a campaign.
I really don't understand why this isn't happening more and why it's not being publicly marketed. (I've mentioned it to other powers on Steemit.) Crowdfunding here would eliminate nearly all of the problems with current crowdfunding platforms. If I had more technical knowledge and experience, I would develop this for Steemit myself. Is there anyone looking into this on the development side?
I don't think it's a good idea to copy features from BitShares.
And this is because .. ?