But Hive does not offer free service. You can buy into the chain (vest) and gain the right to use it roughly in proportion to your share. Compared to other chains, in particular those that charge direct fees, we have the following:
- whales are effectively subsidizing the plankton, because they can't really use their whole share - only in the unlikely scenario of RC costs shooting up drastically pushing smaller accounts out, whales will still be able to operate (so an app that absolutely has to have unhindered access to the chain has to have big stake)
- users don't compete for place on the chain by pushing the fees up - while consensus-wise it is up to witnesses, default behavior is to place transactions in order of their appearance, so when the RC costs are normal and the limiting factor is the block size, smaller users are not cut off the chain
- users can gain stake not only by investing money, but also by investing time and skills - if the on chain traffic increases due to proliferation of third party apps and the token price will make direct investments unaffordable to normal people, that's when gaining stake through blogging (or from DHF) will be easier
But you are right. It is possible that Hive will get 100-200 new whales representing some applications, those whales will flood the chain with their custom operations, RC costs will increase to the point where normal people can't afford to operate, which will drive them out. Token price would increase, but not to the point where node operators could suddenly afford much higher class equipment.
I don't believe in above scenario for one reason - if the application only needed the chain and not the community, it would be more reasonable to just set new chain with Hive code. Such apps could still be connected to Hive, operating on its own chain (can still be decentralized) for the most part, but broadcasting to Hive transactions that are needed for future replays. In fact recent developments (under the disguise of "lite accounts") seem to point in that direction.