No one was fired, he became uncontactable, can ask him yourself if you get hold of him, we still pay server costs and have a new developer for GINA, even though GINA is not a revenue producing service, we keep it active as a community service.
Our token doesn't need to have value Steem does, because token holders earns a proportionate share of Steem revenue, however we pay server and infra expenses in USD so low steem price means not much to distribute after expenses.
Yes, the reason I asked about him is that he became unreachable and i worry about him.
If GINA have become a burden for you i will be more than happy to recover it and pay for the infrastructure costs.
I hope your developer is been able to fix the excessive calls to nodes and optimize a little the code.
Regarding the way your token is managed and whether it needs to have value or not. It is not really my business, but since steem does not hold value I sincerely doubt the model you are using is sustainable in the long term and that it will serve to attract competent developers.
I must recognize that is a sustainable model when based in a properly managed token/blockchain or in a bull market, in a bear market it needs capital injection and other measures that cost FIAT, but i am sure you know that. And the company made previsions during the last bull for this.
Anyway, thanks for your answer, and hit me on discord if you want to get rid of the costs of that community service.