From 2,997 active users across all lemmy instances at the beginning of June, the number increased to 52,797 by June 30th. Source.
An active user on Lemmy is "someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame.” Source. That means lurkers are not counted as active users.
We’re really building something here!
I think the difficulty adds a bit of a natural filter for those that really want to leave Reddit vs those that just want to check things out.
But yes, easy access would make it more mainstream which may be better for long term growth of the platform.