One of the main characteristics of Web 3 is account ownership, which has been one of the focuses of Hive, as a glaring difference compared to Web 2, where accounts are de facto rented from the companies behind the platforms, and can be taken back, along with access to anything on them, at any time, and sometimes for bogus reasons, if they bother to provide one.
Thinking through the perspective of account ownership (and everything on them, content or fungible and non-fungible tokens), every Web 3 user is in fact an owner of the platforms they use and where they start accumulating tokens that represent ownership in the platform.
These examples have been given so many times. As owners, people should treat these platforms as businesses which they partially own, and they need to act as if they were their own business. If one holds HIVE Power, they should want and need to help Hive as a whole succeed. If they hold SPS, they should want and need to help Splinterlands succeed. If they hold LEO they need to do the same for Inleo. And so on.
It is obvious we don't do that all the time, and many users never think at the well-being of the platforms they use.
Ownership is... difficult. It comes with responsibilities, where many only want to earn, make money, make friends, or be entertained. Maybe that's one reason why DEXes are not so popular compared to CEXes or TradFi. One needs to be responsible to keep their private keys safe and to not make stupid things online that compromises their security without any recourse or someone they could run to for help or to blame.
TradFi surely knows how to take that responsibility away from you, along with control of your hard-earned money. And if anything goes wrong - and it usually does if enough time passes - tough luck, you'll be the last to get paid, if you ever will.
So, most users in Web 3 are simply that, in mentality: users. Despite being owners. It's difficult to rewire a lifetime of conditioning, where a small fraction of the society are business owners (that actually succeed), the rest at most work for a paycheck.
Let's also not forget about the different reasons people join, as I said above. For many, this is a fun new thing they try out, not a business they want to build up.
So, making a switch mentally from users to owners would be difficult for many, for various reasons, in my opinion.
But I do see an intermediary level that probably isn't used to its full potential on Hive, at least: contributors. These would be people who for various reasons can't be involved as much or all the time in growing the ecosystem or parts of it, but on specific things they would like to help, often when help is asked for and not at their own initiative.
I know there are attempts in this direction to involve users in some way, probably with various degrees of success. SPK does it often. Inleo has done it and still does it I guess by taking all feedback seriously. Splinterlands also appreciates good feedback, but they also prefer well thought out ideas, not something half-baked and then leaving the team to bang their heads against the wall to figure out the most important parts. Propolis Wiki is another project that is based on contributions. Different projects have people who do manual curation for them. There are other types of contributors too, another example being active community mods. Writing posts (videos) that are useful to the community can be a worthy contribution as well (stats, tutorials, news, etc.).
I'm still very surprised that Open Genie doesn't catch on and isn't used more often. It can be a way for various types of jobs be requested and someone completing them, related or not to Hive. A way for contributors to show up and help on the tasks they feel up when they can (and for the right price, since they are paid). Freelancing is a big market to tap into, although AI probably will shrink it. But you still need people who know how to use AI tools. Open Genie would probably need a rating system for various types of jobs. Either that, or one rating system, and multiple accounts would be used, one for each type of job or a few similar ones.
Users are needed. Yes, even those that don't give a damn about ownership in Web 3. They provide the much needed numbers. But probably it's much better to grow them exponentially via lite accounts than to offer them full Hive accounts.
Contributors are the next level, not owners. If you tell someone to be an owner to do their part as if it was their own business, they might get scared away. They might say this is not for me and be on their way or withdraw in their shell and think only about themselves.
Contributors may not be as scary, unless they think they have to donate money or something like that! 😂
Oh well, I guess there are people you can't please no matter how you put it. And there is always a risk that when you please some you upset others. Like always in life.