Yeah but you're missing the point I'm making man. That the GLUE to any platform is how those people stay connected to the human networks that they become a part of.
Discord is a MUST for this Hive thing to facilitate social. So then clearly this tech falls short of user retention because it's a very small crowd that find that appealing. It's an embarrassment to claim web3.0 as superior yet this tech doesn't even consider connectivity a necessity.
So no matter what "dapps" and tribes people within this small ecosystem create, it's just not ever going to exist beyond a small group of loyalist. Because really for every 1 user that Hive gains it loses at least 15 that come, look, try, and say NOPE.
So to make the claim that hiveio makes, and many others hold as the mantra of this tech:
Join the revolution.
Actually becomes laughable because what is actually revolutionary here? Tokens for blind voting on content?
Come on man at some point people need to face reality. When the system is unable to retain a large audience there's just never going to be the significant growth that everyone hopes for.
And that 2017-18 boom was heavily due to token value. Had the system provided the social tools (the glue) to keep human activity ON HIVE (STEEM) then it's likely that the network effect you outline would have eventuated and this thing would truly be the globally recognized as revolutionary web3.0 next gen social.
I'd agree exponential growth was wasted on stinc and their need to create bagholders to continue their cons.
However, that doesn't preclude its happening at some point now that we are less a bagholder creation tool and more a place to come and meet people that are really nice, mostly.
We even encourage some to become somebodies amongst us.
I get why a long term user could get lost in the weeds, but this is the best the platform has looked, ever.
The 'greedy f**cks' that had kept their knees on our necks up to hf25 through the poor tax robbing the poor of half the value of their stake have been overruled by folks with enough stroke to get the change done.
Some say it was because of rpc overload, so I don't discount that totally, but the facts are the coders knew exactly what they were doing reducing by up to half the value of stake less than their's, and that has been reversed with hf25.
This is a big deal.
Watch the excitement in the pool when things get back to normal in another week or two.
We should slowly grow as the inflation accommodates new people into the fold.