I think the marketing team was far ahead of the development and it amounted to hype and didn't help. That's not a knock of the marketing team. Not a knock of the devs, but something to consider. Consider not marketing something if you don't have something to back it up, which I think was part of the problem the first 11 months of 2017.
A very valid point. Too many times I have observed this in various projects. Either the marketing is way ahead of the product, or vise versa. People have to plan things...
Look at SONM - a sleeping giant, the product is under heavy development and it is receiving constant updates and it is only using organic marketing and regular communication on all available channels. When the product will be released, then the marketing strategy will change drastically to raise awareness.