The only obvious thing I can think about that feels least friction is opt-in ads (sounds extremely weird but I would opt-in to help), could be a low hanging fruit

Ad revenue tends to be low for anything with under millions of visits a month, so a few other things that could help would be

1. (cheap) paid awards that burn HIVE, reddit style. I would burn a few fractions of HIVE to give awards to posts of comments I find valuable or highly agree with, they are almost like reactions with extra value. This is more than donation to the poster/commenter, reddit really does it well and people love it, I love it.

2. subscription service, I have not been active on Hive, what do people value and what could a subscription add value their experience? a subscription that gives them a few "free" awards a month to distribute already connects with the award idea.

I recognize you are more active, more experienced in every way and have been on Hive longer than I, so what are your thoughts on those?

Those feel (but may not be) to me like relatively low hanging fruits for being obvious and done and tested in other platforms (I keep thinking reddit). They can bring revenue from people spending, rather than investing, and without something along thise lines I am afraid that Hive will always be musical chairs game with people getting in and out but without an ROI.

I am actually even scared that I will miss out on a bull run if Hive has income that is not investing because the Hive will have projects with real revenue, people buying Hive to burn/spend rather than buying Hive to have more dollars.