Good write.
As I've mentioned in numerous Discord conversations, Hive is STEEM/Steemit on February 13, the day before Justin Sun announced his buyout of Steemit Inc. The blockchain's user base was down to 12,000 active users and struggled to stay in the top 80 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Despite all the bravado and chest thumping, that's not a very auspicious state of affairs.
On Hive, the Steemit Inc. stake was placed in a "trust fund" (Dao) to fund the development of DApps. But how many STEEM DApps, previously funded by Steemit Inc. via delegations, were successful? How many even had anything to do with improving the operations of the STEEM blockchain?
STEEM then (and Hive now) evolved into an "alternative source of venture capital" for software developers. The problem is that that massive diversion of scarce resources (SP) away from curation meant that Steemit was always crippled.
And yet, Steemit was the DApp that the vast majority of Steemians were actually interested in.
I don't know what Justin Sun is doing behind the scenes but if he has developers modifying Steemit such that it becomes what people originally envisioned, Steemit 2.0 could become an extremely attractive place to blog.
Respecting all the "decentralization" rhetoric ... most people couldn't care less. They, like I, just want a FAIR and FUNCTIONAL social media platform where we're paid to create and curate. If I get that, it doesn't much matter whether power is yielded by one tyrant or a group of them (a handful of Whales determine who's appointed a Top 20 Witness).
Until such time, I will continue to post on both blockchains while also participating in Voice Beta. Whichever chain creates a FAIR and FUNCTIONAL social media platform first is the one for which I will launch a marketing blitzkrieg.
Quill