I think those communities will be related somehow with SMT that's why I'm building @dcooperation there. Also I saw a post somewhere telling that we will not earn steem in the future, but only SMT's. So, we can of joining communities now in beta.steemit to be ready to support their SMT in the future. So, just like you are earning tokens in steem-engine, you will earn SMT, but those will be much faster and the price of SMT's maybe much higher as well. Because SMT's are built directly on steem, but not on steem-engine.
Each SMT will have its own rules of curation and distributing the rewards. That's why we will have to choose the right communities to support, just like we are supporting some tribes. Hive is kind of communities on beta.steemit related directly to steem and I think that will make steem great again. For now they are just testing it. So, we are all testors and when SMT's will work, I think that's all will be moved to the main website steemit.com and it will be like reddit, but on steem.
You can see in another comment on this post, that I just got a list of the hives, if you care to take a look, @clixmoney.
I try not to guess what is going to happen in forks. If steem/sp/sbd goes away, I will deal with it when it happens. I can't take the time to deal with this smt thing that has been in the works for almost 3 years now. If it comes - I will adjust then. Today, I work with what we have.
What if they give up on this hive thing? Then what?
Then it will be hard to make steem great again. We all wish for the best for steem, but we can't control that. It's not in our hands simple minnows or people who are trying just to create good content, invite people to steem and pay our bills to keep living. Let's hope for the best.
True - there is not much we can do when the big guys are so big. Hopefully we get more little ones soon.