Yes, we need a "Mascot of Failure." Since we're all about the ocean environment, why not build on that? A deflated whale? A whale with birds and stars circling its head, like it just bumped into a wall? Perhaps even make it a community challenge-- we have lots of talented artists and graphic designers in the community.
We also need a formal status page (something like "steemstatus.org") that lives completely independently of the main site and can become the default load when we have something like this DDoS attack happens. Stick it behind every Cloudflare fence you can muster so it has 100% uptime.
I'm a BIG fan of Steemit and sing its praises all over, but we have-- or are developing-- a problem. We have waaaay too many "developers" and "apps" and not nearly enough designers/artists, human factors and usability people involved in this project.
Steemit will never grow beyond niche status unless some serious front-end work is done on the user experience. What just happened might be OK for some hard core users with some tech knowledge, but let us not forget that the next Steemit user will be just a little less technically inclined, and the 10 millionth next user even less so... if it isn't intuitively "point and tap" they are going to give us 17 seconds and then be gone.
Seriously, I love this place... but someone(s) needs to understand that "scalability" isn't just about transactions per second, it's also about creating a user experience that makes all those transactions necessary.
Meanwhile, a big YES to a "Fail Mascot!"