Steemit worked because it was a new concept in blogging, getting paid to blog, in crypto, sort of worked like a steam engine concept, something went into it, something came out. I agree the concept of hive for a name probably resulted as being viewed as a hive of angery people, like angery bees when something threatened their nest. Personally, therein lays the problem, they don't adequately support all the hive worker bees. I think this has resulted in being a challenging environment whether you look at it from where steem is now compared to hive, even bastyon. They just don't generate the interest because it's not worth it, and the big takeaway is, it's no longer fun. When it was new and exciting, everyone was jumping on the train. Now, to be honest, that Bernie Sanders dude knew how to do it, he's start some shit, and he had everyone checking it out, and he'd go down the list of comments and upvote people a quarter for their participation. That's what brought him his success. People get ignored, or get 1/25th of a penny, well, hey, in the end, you get stuck with people like me who just like to blog and don't give much thought to the money aspect. I mean really, calculate that dude, how many 1/25th of a penny it would take to become a whale. That might work for people in Nigeria, but it doesn't entice people in the western world to want to invest their time or want to invest in crypto. It's that old concept, one hand feeds another. All the penny bullshit isn't going to hit it.
One other big thing now is that people, outside of governments, are moving away from cryptos, they don't want to move toward a digital currency, that's a whole new problem surfacing. Offering no rewards to a fraction of a penny, well, name change or not, it's not going to change minds.