The other difference between now and when Steemit was booming is that everyone and their 2nd cousins were doing How-to blogs about everything Steem and especially the Community Ethics. The learning curve wasn't that big of a thing, because everyone was putting it in laymen's terms in so many different ways, it was impossible not to understand it. I see almost zero how-to blogs these days and I think that makes a huge difference. Hell, there was even a newbie welcoming initiative that dropped links to many of these how-to's on all Introduction posts. I think we need to get back to that and make everything simpler as well.