Has anyone asked the question - which (if any) parts of these different "protocols" worked?
Yes, they did not, for the most part, work.
Some of them bought some friends, but even that has played out, afaik.
Retention seems like an ongoing challenge. HIVE is arguably for people who like to slow down a bit and read or write longer form content.
You can "doom scroll" Hive but it's not going to produce the same dopamine hit as legacy social media.
!ALIVE
!PIMP
!PIZZA
Moar is moar? I do like seeing the price of assists rise to incentivize development and maintenance of HIVE.
Demand should rise when vsc comes on line.
Blogging to get paid is pretty played out, atp.
Only a price rise will bring folks back, now.
Many of whom we don't want, anyways.
I'm okay with being anachronistic. It looks like Nostr gained a little steam from Ian Carroll's commentary - I also think for the time being the default mode of most legacy social media is the dopamine harvest. I don't see anything near term that will change that barring just generalized fatigue.