Any smart contract for Hive would have to be layer 2 to keep performance good. Ethereum is a smart contract platform and they realized they had to go layer 2 for scaling. One of the huge advantages of Hive is performance but smart contracts on layer 1 would compromise that.

Ethereum wanted smart contracts on Layer 1 but they realized that it was taxing the blockchain so they will implement sharding, but sharding is hard and is basically layer 2 at a protocol level. But because it is hard when they finish that the layer 2 stuff will be so well developed that they won't exactly need sharding anymore, although it will be welcome.

Hive needs a layer 2 solution with good smart contracts, because Hive Engine is not that good yet, but I don't think we should have smart contracts at layer 1 at all.

I think we don't have that yet because our blockchain is very small, like under half a billion dollars in market cap, so because of that not many brains are looking at developing here. We have some great devs, but we lack quantity and diversity (that comes with quantity).

The Hive fund helps attract developers, but still the more the better.