That’s true about the governance. I always saw the main purpose of steem and now hive as the gateway to the RC credited needed to use the chain. The individual communities and SMTs associated with them would provided the attraction for the masses to actually use the chain if they realized it or not.
For instance, Splinterlands players do not necessarily care what blockchain it is on, but the splinterlands team will need to RC credits one way of the other to support what could be millions of players.