User retention is actually higher than ever, but still not very good. Our current problem is a chronic lack of new joiners.
But I agree with your point, Splinterlands has been the strongest identifiable driver of Hive price, the impact of high HBD APR is totally unclear.
There's been a lot of new sign ups but I feel it's mainly other applications like Splinterlands so they don't care all to much about hive itself. I could be wrong though we for sure lack some data.
Unfortunately we are at a low ebb in terms of accounts overall, including non-social media users. That said there has been an uptick since it hit a low in July.
It's even worse if you just count users who create a transaction (of any type).