We used to be a core team of 3 developers + some other devs working part time as contractors. And yes the costs went down significantly (more info in the post we published when we lowered the proposal: @peak.open/lowering-our-proposal--for-the-benefit-of-hive ).

As part of the initiative to reduce DHF costs we have been forced to shrink the team but thanks to AI we are trying to keep up with all the projects and updates as usual.

I also detailed all of this a bit more a couple weeks ago in a podcast with the ecency team, blocktrades and starkerz. You can probably still find it around.