Like many commenters here, I too believe that the frontends need to hide the crypto complexity from users until the user wants to see it. Signing up should be as easy as any other popular non-crypto website.
In fact, it might even be easier since maybe the user already has a sign-in from another website they can use similarly to how "sign in with Facebook" works.
As for earning crypto bring a major drawcard, I don't see it happening without some big changes to Steem economics. Within communities, with better focused community UIs, the social might be enough of a drawcard.
Right now, earning from posts is done by inflation. There aren't many other internal member to member value transfers denominated in STEEM that encourage STEEM to stick around or be burned. There isn't the obvious "support my fave content creators" mechanism there are on twitch, YouTube or Patreon for example. I think they might arise in more social oriented frontends.
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