While everyone is busy upgrading and evolving Steemit.com I feel like we aren't focusing enough on all the other possibilities this currency and the DPoS consensus Blockchain Graphene provides.
We have one of the most promising blockchains and the possibility to do so much with our votes than reward authors, why not set it to use?
If the majority thinks that the way Voting Power generates right now is balanced, then leave it be and add more voting power to another section on Steemit that isn't about blogging.
Here are a few ideas for those who are new to the technology, these are just out of the top of my head.
Image used from Steemit post here
Steemfund
Author A writes a Proposal for his business idea, reader/voter B sees this and really likes the idea, he thinks it will benefit the Steem economy. He votes with his limited Fund Voting Power to this project, if enough votes and support is raised, Author A receives a reward - the voters receive a stake in his new project and locks his Fund Voting Power he used for the project for weekly payments to company of Author A. Author A receives his % of profit from the company and the revenue it is creating, rest goes to Curators as Steem Power.
Since we are creating money out of "thin air" this is a win-win-win for everyone involved, and in the end it goes to SP thus supporting the platform as well.
Obviously the SteemFund has a lot of fine-tuning to do to provide balance, but its an idea and its an idea that is being unused even though it could bring so much more to the Steem ecosystem. We could start it off as a beta and keep it between small extensions/addons/other sort of upgrades, like SteemGames, which have their own blockchain and the currency is called Steems, rain-drop on already existing users according to their wallets.
Steemsit
Imagine being able to play games on Steemsit.com and instead of having to buy power ups with your fiat money, you can buy them with Steems that you mine while playing the games. Inner exchange between Steem-Steems, to keep demand for Steems stable until more games are developed, you can choose to place ads within the game and the ad revenue would go to buying SteemPower and giving it divided to users who are playing and earning Steems too. Thus further supporting Steem as well and having a healthy market and usage for the gamers.
There are way too little gamers in blogging culture and as expected those topics and tags are unused. I really urge people to start developing more as there are almost no limits to what blockchain can do and how it can outperform the current economy and how it operates.
Power and Value to the people.
Feel free to add more comments on ideas or upgrades you could think to add to these Suggestions! Would really appreciate a discussion and how we could further evolve this within the community. Thanks for reading! :)