Sort:  

Then what is it?

It's a platform for content creators to monetize their work. Beyond blogging, it's a transactional platform, a curation platform, and a community building platform.

Hell, if you go check out ChainBB, it's a web forum - which, in my view, is distinct from blogging. https://beta.chainbb.com

Just my opinion though :-).

All blockchain-based applications are sort of a transactional platform. A curation mechanism is an important component for a good blogging system. Most of the commercial blogging system allow content creators to monetize their work one way or another, mostly with advertising revenues. A community building platform concept is also can be regarded as an extended utilization format of the contents of the blogging system. I may say my concept of blogging system here means a broader definition.
ChainBB looks great. But why do you need SBD in chainBB? Is it a vital component for ChainBB? When you have another good working tool such as bitUSD, why not integrate it into the system and expanding the ecosystem with BitShares?
My point is it is better to utilize other graphene engines based applications and tools when you need the functionalities instead of creating another isolated tools which makes the Steem sytem unnecessarily complicated.

yea I gotta do more research on BitShares, I honestly know very little about that project.