I went to steeminvite. This is what I've seen:
The current cost for a claim is 3.000 STEEM or 9.54MM RC mana
Your maximum RC mana is 9.01MM, which does not let you claim any accounts.
Power up some STEEM!
Before HF20 I had "made 8 steemians". Real people with something to say. All I had to do was pay 0.1 STEEM and delegate 20 SP for a month. After creating the account I would remove 17 SP of delegation and let the new steemians manage with 3 SP which was usually sufficient under the bandwidth system. If it turned out one of the guys I've invited did not like steem I could always remove delegation down to 1 SP.
So my cost under HF 19 was 1 SP (0.1 + 0.9 delegated)
Now with my 4400+ SP available I can't claim any discounted account. And if I want to pay I need to spend 3 STEEM.
Is it just me or would it seem that the price has tripled (from 1 STEEM to 3 STEEM) with HF20 ? Is that supposed to make on-boarding easier? If yes, how? If not, wasn't "making on-boarding easier" one of the goals of HF20?
I was all fired up about making new steemians ... Too bad it has just become 3 times as expensive ...
And btw, none of my 8 "steemians-in-law" took a habit of posting (most never posted anything). The reason: sub-par (for them) user experience ... Oh well, I have just wasted 8 SP, but it was worth trying. Until they get a chance at posting and seeing how the community reacts, you cannot tell how they'll appreciate the experience.
However, will I think the same if instead it would have been 24 SP wasted on creating accounts that will seldom, if ever, be used?
You can remove the full delegation, no need to let anything on the accounts when they aren't used.
The RC cost to claim has been pretty stable at 5.5MM the last days, it spiked with my post. Claims do not expire, so it pays out to keep an eye on the price if it drops again.
But yes, for small investors it's become more expensive to create an account. As any action will become more and more expensive with time, as there's limited capacity on the blockchain.
If it makes sense to pay for onboarding someone is a case by case decision.
I'd tried to (in HF19 time) but it won't let me bring the "child account" below 1.0 SP.
And anyway I may not want to - just in case the person I gifted an account to changes his/her mind and gets back and tries to post or comment or upvote, I would certainly no want him/her to not be able to because I've stripped the account of all SP.
I tested in the past and with 1 SP one could still do something under HF19. Under HF20 that doesn't seem to be sufficient anymore (I need to test again) so I left 3 SP to each of my "steem children-in-law"