You express my views almost like a psychic medium. I've seen that too for a long time.. there's no progress because those select few get paid either way. In fact slow uptake suits them better because more users means rewards go down.

I don't see that second layer rolling out anytime soon. The recent talk between the coders was a little worrying. @blocktrades essentially had to spell out what second layer means to the other coders. So how is it that after all this time they're not even clued to it? It proves SMT was always just a great idea but existed as a dusty whitepaper only.

So for that I see at least half a year before activity becomes significant. The H-E second layer by @aggroed seems just like a money grab so I just don't see that as a solution. People who code things here want money first, when there's really no businesses minds here or a large enough userbase for that to make sense. Hence everything has very tiny communities.

The current model just isn't making Hive attractive. Even if something is ready soon, people outside still need to find out about it, projects still need time to get established, and users take time to migrate.

From my perspective, as long as Discord is the default chat for Hive users and there's no superior mobile app to get into people's hands then this is not at all going to be anything more than a niche blogging chain. Leo is achieving success because crypto blogging is relevant.

Any other group though is just fine on the mainstream platforms because they're well catered for.