I nominate xeroc as community leader, now that Dan is busy with Steem.
Not sure about the rebrand. That is a pretty big change. And though I like the simplicity of the name DEX, but how does that affect SEO?
These changes however would require another pitch-fork, similar to that of 1.0 > 2.0, because the base functions are too radically different from our current code base. The steem experiment likely will reveal its potential successes/failures by September.. if what Dan offered previously is still at all feasible at that time, then I would list this as a pending 3rd event to coincide with a rebranding.
I don't think adding market liquidity subsidies (assuming funding comes from worker proposals) and rate-limited free transactions are big enough changes to warrant a version change to 3.0 (they are of course hard forking changes though).
And personally I don't agree with the Steem Dollar mechanism (the one change that really would be radical for BitShares) being used on BitShares (assuming BTS was the backing asset) as the new smartcoin implementation. Seigniorage can be an added mechanism to a smartcoins 2.0 to act as a last resort insurance to back the peg. But in that case each smartcoin would have its own token backing it (not BTS) that could be diluted to back the peg. The holders of the token are compensated for this inflation risk by receiving dividends (or buyback and burn) from profits made from the interest revenue paid by shorters. This is what MakerDao is doing with their Dai and MKR. There are valuable things to take from their approach for a smartcoins 2.0, including backing the smartcoin by more than one collateral type for greater diversity.
I suppose the only other radical change that can be borrowed from Steem and implemented in BitShares is the idea that only vested stake can vote, and they would be compensated for their lack of liquidity by a small but reasonable interest rate (see the post linked to in the footnote [1] for more details on a possible implementation). This is not radical or difficult to implement from a coding perspective, but it is socially radical because it changes the rules. That is a change that might perhaps require a "pitch-fork" (interesting term btw) to a 3.0 (or even a new rebranded blockchain). Or maybe the vast majority of stakeholders would think that is a really great idea and have no problem with it for a hard fork? Probably not.
[1]
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@xeroc/improvment-bitshares-workers-proposal-thedao#
@arhag/re-xeroc-improvment-bitshares-workers-proposal-thedao-20160520t015315090z
EDIT: DAMN this forum for replacing the @ symbol followed by text with the member tag even when it clearly shouldn't (in a link for example). It makes it impossible to link to Steemit.