rather balance our idealism with realism - not “realism” in the cynical sense that kills dreams altogether,

I agree on that.

The advantage of having grown up pre-internet and pre-social media and having witnessed the beginnings gives you a more realistic picture of what is happening than if you were unable to follow it. YouTube, for example, was operating in the red for an extremely long period of time by today's standards. The (later) investors had both a very long breath and finances, an extremely optimistic goal and the luxury of allowing the user to benefit from free account set-up, free uploads and downloads and easy access. For a long time this has remained the same. Now we see the channel rapidly evolving into an advertising platform due to the immense number of users and all sorts of new features being implemented at a faster pace.

For Hive to experience a similar success story, it would probably have to be pushed by the few with very full pockets. Since cryptocurrencies are still not mainstream, I assume that staying power plus the consistent pursuit of an experience that favours the user should be concentrated on. In order to grant the user this, it does not necessarily seem to be the first prerequisite that they gain monetarily, but rather that the fun of using a platform and its possibilities takes centre stage.

Seen in this light, it can even be viewed as a disadvantage that Hive (or Steemit) started with the idea that "users can earn money for blogging." This puts the focus on payouts. Funnily enough, people don't seem to prioritise this per se, as the history of Wikipedia shows. But once it's sold as the unique selling point, it gets the attention.

People are interested in participating, sharing opinions, gaining power, building up a trading place etc. - the monetary success is a consequence of that, I think. But if monetary success is the starting motivation, it seems to get stuck in fiercely held debates about "distribution", whether when payouts are out of the way, the currency are the themes and topics as well as single characters themselves, I think.

I maybe wrong, though and things might have changed.

P.S. ... perhaps every moment that allows for financial gain is the very moment that brought a once incipient and interesting and vibrant internet communication platform to life, where it becomes ordinary and corrupt. I recognise a paradox in this. As long as people make sense to each other, having fun, taking things rather lightly, things are going well. It's only when they start to take it hard, when "earning money" becomes a hassle and a treadmill, that people start to get sour about it. The less they put friendly work into it the more they complain about "having worked so hard". Indeed.