A few thoughts:

1. Social platforms require interaction between people. Kill the bots. They have enabled people to simply put it on auto-drive and no longer directly participate.
2. Content is king. Therefore prioritize authors over curators. If the authors continue to leave, there will be nothing(good) left for curators to curate!
3. Competition (Winter) is here. Steemit once held a long-lead as the crypto reward social site. No longer. Sites like Minds, HyperSpace, Trybe, Publish0x, and others are direct competitors and others are on the way with big names behind them (ex. Facebook). Even off-shoots like Golos, WhaleShare, Weku Serey, Bihu, etc. are also diluting participation. Either fix the development/consensus model or replace it so Steemit can be at the forefront of usability/features. Adapt rapidly to users needs or die.
4. Have a backout plan. Some changes require a production release, we get that. Use the Beta premise for those. If it sucks, you need to back it out. Changes are good but put in an automatic method to reverse if it does not pan out. Only if people like it after a trial period should it remain, else it is walked back. Use that as your consensus method. Instituting a bad idea, knowing that it will be VERY HARD to remove, is shortsighted.