We should look to go beyond "blockchain competition" and look to compete with giants like facebook , medium and the twitters. Currently the entire Hive blockchain is a function of posts that are no older than 7 days. No one cares about anything older than that since the payout is already done. Its just human psychology.
Most of the content that the world consumes like food, travel, music, humor and art etc have an indefinite shelf life. They generate revenue for the content maker for years. If Hive is to become a hub for content makers so that a billion people from around the world log on to hive to have "a good time" the platform needs to be something that a professional content maker can use to monitize their content beyond the current seven days.
The biggest competition to Hive is not another blockchain called steem. But technologies like Brave browser and BAT token. Which is rapidly growing and ensuring that content makers can get paid directly by users on the current platforms they exist on. If BAT becomes the mainstream crypto protocol to support good content, it will significantly reduce the incentive for newer and younger content makers to seek fresh platforms.
That will not be good for a platform that in terms of its size with respect to the larger digital world is still in its infancy. Hive will need to grow to a certain size and stature so that it can survive the changes that happen in the the larger eco-system. If one were to look at a bench mark. I would say we should look to become atleast a size that compares to medium.(com)
RE: Hive Hardfork 24: Upcoming Release Candidate, Testnet, and Other Info