I think the reason may have been that so much of the code was from steem. I am not a programmer so I am not sure. The fact though is that the devs have removed a large portion of the steem references.
The system is far from complete and that's why growth doesn't happen.
This is a wrong statement. Growth is happening in all sectors of Hive Block Chain, one just needs to look. The foundation layer is as we speak being solidified on Hive Block Chain. The Developers are very busy in that arena.
The social side as things are repaired is very active on their development areas. Recent changes at PeakD, Leo-Finance, and dozens of other communities and front end access points are all very busy updating and upgrading user experience.
Game development is doing well on Hive, it seems every month a new game is being put out.
New users while not flying in in the thousands are coming into Hive Block Chain and some are even staying. The Music industry it seems is finding Hive block chain so many new Music makers I find it great.
The video bloggers are finding 3speak and dtube and other Hive connected video services.
So you see growth is happening and to say otherwise is just simply wrong.