Great to see you guys looking at Hive at much wider perspective because being just a social platform is probably a dead end in the long term.

It's like the reward pool is just a way to distribute the tokens and next we have to give them some value.

That's why I would still love to have a decentralized Hive side-engine for smart contracts. For example - as far as I know we can't build any DeFi service on Hive, as it would have to be operated by single entity. Customs jsons are great for gaming and other entertainment stuff, but when it comes to finances, having a trustless way to deposit and manage your tokens is probably a must. And it seems that finance services (and maybe ads) is the best way to bring value to the ecosystem. Cheers!