The tools were built and shipped, in the open: HAF Plug & Play (full V2 rewrite, plus the delegations and Podping plugs), the Hive DEX API, and GNS with user preferences and a demo frontend. The Podping service ran on Plug & Play in production, so "nothing useful" isn't accurate.
What is fair to hold me to is the integration gap, and it went both ways. HAF Plug & Play and GNS were built for Hive's frontends to plug into, but I never pushed for adoption, and they never reached for the tools either. So working tools just sat there underused.
My approach now is different. I'm not shipping infrastructure and waiting on others to plug in. FreeBeings DAO is built directly on that same infrastructure, so I'm my own first user of it, and I'm developing those same tools further.
The "$300k" figure is false, and it's on-chain for anyone to check. The DHF funded exactly three of my proposals:
Each one only paid while it was above the DHF funding line, so the paid totals come in below the approved maximums. Total actually paid: 152,775.94 HBD. Even at the full approved rate for every day, the maximum would have been 163,760 HBD. Either way it's around $153k, not $300k.
RE: Improving Hive: building better tools, in the open