Great post and great designs! I am just a new user who joined after Steemit went south.
I think the real value, rather than paying users, is paying content creators like you ~
The internet now is riddled with ads, hidden marketing and sales pitches disguised as content:

• social media posts constantly trying to sell something (brands or individuals)
• ads embedded in mentioned social media (more "trying to sell something")
• blog posts that try to sell affiliate material (so the user always wonders if this content is genuine or a clever ploy)

There is nothing wrong with creators trying to earn, people need money to live after all.
But the saturation of ads and sales pitches is slowly killing online content. Content consumers are fatigued by the barrage of ads (pop ups or built in the content) and creators are burned out by having to shill real hard to get by (which ultimately enriches the sales platform and not even the creator).

So Hive is kind of like... Patreon/Ko-Fi but subsidized by all consumers rather than placing the burden on paying subscribers or buyers. So people can get the quality that is normally locked behind a paywall for free, ad free.

The other pro vs existing platforms is the pay to curate model - Hive seems to have less junk content compared to Facebook, insta or other web2/web3 socials I have seen so far.

To sum up Hive:

• support content creators
• support to curate said content

And the end result is a platform that has high quality, original content that is accessible and free for everyone, yay!
Take this with a pinch of salt because I only joined recently, but Hive really feels different for some reason. Time will tell.
:)