This is the week that $HIVE dropped below 4c. It has been falling faster than certain other coins and that is sad to see. Despite that I do not see a mass panic here. People are not just here for the rewards. We have our communities here and it can be fun. Meanwhile 99.9999% of social media posting is not paying those people anything. The rewards are a bonus here, but we also have freedom and a platform that allows you to do properly formatted posts that are not hidden by algorithms. If you want to see what people post then you just follow them or join a common community. There may be the odd promoted post in your feed, but you have a lot of control. If you really do not want to see someone then you simply mute them.
@howo is a long-time Hive developer who works on the core code. He has put together an alternative implementation. This matters as the protocol should not just be defined by the existing code. This process has shown up some potential issues with that so it is useful. Hive needs to scale and that may be helped by using difference programming languages. His proposal is not currently funded so you can support that. He has reduced the amount requested.
@hivepostify is a project by a young developer in Pakistan to provide a platform for people there. They have asked me for support, but I can only give so much. They aim to bring in a lot of new users, but I have said that you have to show that those people bring value to Hive. Check it out to see if you want to add support or even offer to help out. I would think we must have other developers in Pakistan.
@seckorama is another person marking ten years on Hive. There will be a few more coming up as some of us have stuck with it all that time.
@blanchy has been doing a deep dive into the change logs of some Hive projects to get some idea of what they have done for the funding they get. That is one measure of work, but what really matters is how we all benefit from that work.During the latest Hive Thrive show there was some talk about a big Tiktok person being on-boarded to Hive and getting what was perceived as a hostile reception. I have not seen the actual post, but I know that a lot of new users get a comment from 
If you bring someone in then guide them through the early stages and reassure them if they get worried by comments like that. HW need to be open to working with the on-boarders to reduce the friction.
In general Hive needs to be a welcoming place if we want it to grow. We should not assume that new users are spammers/leeches/undesirable, especially not just based on where they come from. Most will have been on-boarded by an existing user and that person has some responsibility to set realistic expectations. A new user should not be expecting to instantly earn a lot, especially given the current price. Of course we want users who generate 'high value' posts, but they need an audience to give them votes and comments. So we need various types of Hiver in order to grow.
If someone joins and the first post has issues such as excessive AI, plagiarism etc then they ought to at least get a warning before the downvotes start. I know that some cases will be more obvious if they follow certain patterns, but we should try to scare away those who come here with wrong expectations and may be willing to be better Hivers.
'Protecting the reward pool' is all very well, but that is small change these days and we need more people here. At least give them a chance.
I have long thought that Hive communities should be a first stop for new users. If you can find people who share your interests then you will immediately have things to discuss. On other platforms this seems to work well. Just this week I found the above group on FB. That is 20k+ people sharing pictures of their cats on their guitar amplifiers. How niche can you get? Yet that is probably more than the total active users on Hive. If we can get a few niche groups of even a few hundred people onto Hive then it could kick something off. We just have to avoid putting them off from the start.
I see a few people saw the eclipse this week. That is an example of the sort of thing we can have as a shared experience here. Always be thinking beyond your own posts to what can bring people together.
Hive is people!
BTW as I write this the images keep coming and going in the peakd editor. I hope they appear okay.
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