Hive: Need introspection and future course of action.
Hive is not at all a new cryptocurrency and does boost the significant user base, thanks to its Social Media Interface. However, the Social media interface is just one of the capabilities available on the blockchain. If I ask a question that how well Hive is doing, I guess you can get different answers depending on the frame of reference of that user. If you keep your frame of reference as Steem and Blurt, then Hive is doing too great but if you compare it against its price against Bitcoin, then you will understand that Hive is bleeding in Satoshi values and constantly keeps slipping on its market cap rank.
The price of Hive was too volatile at the time of the fork(March 2023) and settled for the figure of 3000 Satoshi per Hive. Even at the start of the year 2023, Hive was 1500 Satoshi on average, So in a year Hive almost lost 50% of its value and more than 75% from inception. I feel these may be the reasons that are associated with the Hive price decline.
Easy onboarding
Hive onboarding is still a difficult task. With multiple keys and steps, the New user is somewhat lost in creating the Hive account or not able to hold the Keys as discussed. I guess at current only inleo provides the "social media" login and onboarding but the popular interfaces like Hive.blog,peakd and eccency do not have this option. This makes the new user onboarding at Hive very difficult.
Smart contracts
Hive is a Layer1 blockchain but still, it does not have provisions of smart contracts. I feel most developers might shun Hive due to the lack of ability of smart contracts in the platform. I am not sure if Hive has any framework which helps in the cross-chain operation i.e again one of the latest buzz.
More Decentralization
Hive works on the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism and Hive stakeholders put their witness votes for the witness. Top 20 witnesses are mainly responsible for the block production in chain and chain progression. I have found people who find this number 20 is too low. It started looking like that instead of Decentralized, the chain is centralized to the top 20 witnesses.
Free transaction vs trust of the users or adoption issue.
One of the great features of Hive is that it offers free transactions at the block speed of 3 seconds in the form of Hive as well as in HBD(Hive-backed Dollar, a stablecoin backed by Hive). I have not encountered any narrative where the user used Hive/HBD to do a significant amount of transactions. It simply means that either Hive is not adopted enough or the users that are having high-value transactions are not trusting Hive for that purpose.
My 2 Cents.
I am not very technical on Blockchain specs and above are my own views based on my long stay on this chain, So you can feel free to suggest your views and thinking and offer correction if you feel something is not correctly represented.