I remember @dan saying that STEEM 2.0 will take some time to be released. I think he wanted to make Bitshares 2.0 first. For the time being we have https://www.ono.chat on EOS and personally I don't think it'll be that much of a competition.
I also like if some whales end up selling their stake because the distribution will be spread among more people. Blockchain is meant to be decentralized. @dan left and we did fine. So what if @ned bails. We don't have to depend on one team. That's centralized method. there are many projects like @steemhunt @dlive @fundition happening without Steemit,Inc