I would guess that people leave because they realize that the amount of time and effort they have to put in is not worth it.
This has nothing to do with inequality, but a simple lack of equity. Do people quit their job in the real world because the CEO makes more money than them? No, this is the standard. People are very much used to that type of inequality.
If people could come to Hive and consistently make even $5 an hour they would stick around; especially people from developing nations where $5/h would actually be a pretty damn good wage.
On a real level Hive simply does not yet have the infrastructure to offer this kind of equity to the community. Blogging is a very niche activity. As more people try to earn from blogging massive diminishing returns kick in. At the end of the day we just need more jobs, and perhaps even training programs to seed them. 100% an infrastructure issue.
Is onboarding a pain in the ass? Sure? Is handling 4 keys a barrier to entry? Yes; many good points are made within your post, but none of them matter when people can actually come here and work for a fair wage. They can't so we're left wondering what the problem is and how we grease the wheels and fix it, but that is the core problem.
If this was true, we would expect that users would leave at higher rates when the rewards are lower. There have been times when the median post reward was substantially higher but users leave at the same rate (or even slightly higher rates).
Consistency of rewards could be an explanation which could be measured and tested for as a competing hypothesis.
You are assuming that all types of work are a static variable in this equation.
Blogging is a pretty niche activity. What percentage of the population should write for a living?
If your job is to pass butter... might not matter how much you're getting paid. Passing the butter is boring and not interesting. Tedious and monotonous even. Though the task at hand of passing the butter is easy, the psychological effort of continuing to grind away doing the same thing over and over with very little guarantees could have... sub-optimal results.
Just kidding I would totally expect more people to leave when the rewards were lower.
Very interesting analysis you have here.
I think hive has a great thing to offer: communities. the problem is these communities quite often are murky places and people have no clue what to do with them, how to post, are their posts are gonna be interesting to others?
Kill me I have no idea what cent is all about, neoxian, pob xD