a serious technical and social overhaul

It is much less complex than implied. There are key features necessary to control Hive: plutocracy and DV's. Unless I am missing something (which wouldn't surprise me) that's the fundamental control mechanism that prevents Hive from being a truly decentralized social platform that enables communities to use it to govern themselves. Enabling stake weight to completely control governance by controlling which code is run, by controlling which witnesses run it, is the reason DV's are used to suppress growth, the reason DV's enable whales to capture >90% of the inflation from the rewards pool, and the reason that DV's functionally censor speech whales don't like. The current cabal that controls Hive has to suppress growth because their stake is lunch money to IRL investors seeking growth. Sun Yuchen purchased Steemit, Inc. with a mere few $m's. The suppression of growth eliminates interest of billionaires that could capture Hive exactly as Sun Yuchen captured Steem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please.