Once upon a time, on a different blockchain, there was a service called likwid.
The service would receive a part of your author rewards (by setting it as a beneficiary of your post author rewards), and returned the liquid Hive for it when the rewards were paid after 7 days. It was an easy way to liquify your author rewards without initiating a power down.
If you are wondering, no, likwid service doesn't run anymore. Not on the other blockchain, not on Hive.
It seems to have gone bankrupt when its funds were transferred to @ community321 account in that horrible move. Later, all those funds stolen and moved to this account from different community members were sent to Bittrex by a white-hat hacker, with instructions to give them back to their rightful owners. By the way, what did Bittrex do with those funds, after all?
How did this service work? It took a 1% fee for the service. It also engaged in passive curation to earn some rewards this way. It was always powering down everything to have liquid Hive to pay everyone for their author rewards.
The system seems to me simple, flexible and effective. Other than needing a relatively significant stash of liquid Hive to start with, and a flawless script, I don't see why this wouldn't be a good service nowadays on Hive.
There will always be some demand to liquify your author rewards. And while I don't believe such a service would be very profitable, it is running practically on autopilot.
With the coming improvements to the stability of HBD, plus the potential targeted increase of the APR for staking it, it provides another option to have liquidities on demand when needed. Still starting after 7 days, but if you post every day and are well rewarded, those liquid Hive can add up rather quickly.
And you don't have to touch your HP.
Personally, I didn't use the likwid service while it was functioning (other than for testing, maybe), but I always thought it's a bonus to have it around, and never excluded the possibility that I will use it some day.
Unfortunately some day didn't come before the new owners of the old blockchain made sure it was out of business.
What do you think, would such a service make sense on Hive or there's no need for it?