The greatest achievement should be the actual useable services that steem has to offer. Dplay, steemit, utopia etc marketing and value could as well come from the services improving further.
For example while steemit is OK, but you don't crave it like reddit. Dplay is fine, but lacks the polish and has a bits of not suitable stuff for the masses (ipfs settings etc), stuff that user should not need or care knowing about.
Tech is great, but in the long run, the value will come from the masses craving services. How they work is not really of interest, if it works and it works better than alternatives.