Is this because the incentive scheme inside Steemit is not sustaining the value of steem enough to keep a dev team on board?
Or is this a function of a bear market in the Fiat value of Steem forcing the Steemit team to cut back?
Both are probably true, to which I say: let's play this experiment in community based social networks. Steemit is still in the early phase of the new decentralised digital world. It may not be the standard bearer in the long run but its successes and failures are the stepping stones on which the next free and decentralised social networks will be built.
Remember we had Myspace, and now we have Facebook. And with the latter we can already see the success of their operational model is inversely proportional to users awareness of the exploitation of their privacy.
This leads me to say: "Ads, go ahead if you think so"
Ads are also a vital part of the market forces that make up a healthy economy.
The users will decide in the long run.