Yeah well they are trying to work out those problems. And do not think they are exclusive to Hive.

How would you like to be building a Leofinance on Ethereum with all the issues they had. One moment it costs a few cents to transact, then it is a few dollars.

There are a lot of things going on to improve the performance of the chain. I think it will get there.

For example, Blocktrades mentioned altered the data so that applications are able to pull only what they need (usernames, balances, etc..) and not all the API data. This will make life easier on developers while also, I imagine, improving the performance of those nodes since less data will be pulled with each request.