Next thing we're planning to release after main release is Lite Accounts feature. I think this will simplify onboarding issues without giving rise to the "trust" and "long-term portability" problems associated with other attempts at lite accounts so far, so I think it can be a big boost for onboarding.
I think privacy coins and defi are probably best done at 2nd layer to detach the first layer from regulatory risk. For the most part, anything done on first layer can be done on 2nd layer just as well, so I hope to the keep the first layer to a bare minimum, functionality-wise, leaving it primarily as a transport layer for 2nd layers that guarantees them a total ordering and immutability.
On a related topic, I have another open-source project we've been working on for a few years where we're developing a "information discovery and voluntary collaboration" environment (it's a much smaller organization, just 3 programmers).
We've just finally reached the minimum-viable product stage and began prototype testing. Hopefully we'll start doing trial tests with larger groups of people soon.
Eventually I want to take advantage of Hive's immutability aspect as a feed engine to that system, so I'll introduce it to Hiveans at that point: it'll bring a lot of new use-cases for Hive as well such as customizable news feeds, advanced polling features, demographic analysis, forum-style discussions with optional AI moderation, consensus-building features, document management, Q&A, web-based research with AI assistance, information attribution and provenance tracking, customizable rating and reputation systems, and customizable proposal voting systems.
RE: Release of new HAF API stack 1.28.6 next week