I am trying to find a measure of hope.

I came here with a bunch of other people who also have/had a measure of hope, because the shitshow now governed by Emperor Sun sure as hell didn't inspire any hope. I still remember my very first feeling on the news "Tron acquires Steemit, Inc..."

Uh-oh...

But to take your baton and extend it a little bit further... the biggest challenge (as I see it, anyway) remains the same it has always been... and it remains "The Great Pink Elephant in the Room" and that is, there's no clear definition of what this place IS."

As a result — and I think I may have shared this with you in the past — I can't get beyond this feeling that we have this nifty "Boat" and a bunch of very enthusiastic people...

BUT

Some of them have oars, some have paddles, some have sails, some have outboard motors, some have jet engines, some have only their hands, some have webbed feet... and NOBODY has a compass, NOBODY has a sea chart, and NOBODY knows the destination...

BUT

...everybody is enthusiastically doing their thing in the full and absolute belief that they are going in the right direction, even though NOBODY actually knows what the fuck that direction is, NOR even what kind of propulsion is actually appropriate!

But we do have a shit-ton of enthusiasm and hope...

From where I am sitting, the greatest failure of Steem/Steemit was that actual users were treated as more or less coincidental — or an afterthought — in the greater scheme of things. Sure, "Developers" and "Blockhainiacs" are also users, but on the whole, a strategy that isn't users-first oriented is akin to building the world's greatest shopping mall (and being very proud of it!) somewhere in West Texas where the nearest actual user is Gomer in his pick-em-up truck, a couple of armadillos and a few tumbleweeds.

If you don't start with "Who's your market? Who's your user? How do you reach them?" it doesn't really matter a great deal how everything else is done...

Building a cool product and hoping people will buy it is a lot riskier than figuring out what people want and building a product to fill that need.

So here we are.

What is Hive? Why does it exist? Who's supposed to think that's cool? What do we have here that will actually make them feel it's cool?

Consider this: Wordpress is only "something" because it has USERS; hundreds of millions of users. Sure, Wordpress has thousands of developers, building add-ons and other stuff. But without USERS? All you'd have would be a very mediocre environment in which to create code.

Sorry about the dissertation, but as you pointed out, there are things to be said.