I believe you are completely missing the point in your “root problem”.
The root problem are incentives. Yes, creating accounts matters as well, but still that is not the hardest thing to do.
The hardest thing is to do what the original mission of steemit was: incentivize content and content creators.
Today steem has no mission and no leadership, but just a little better marketing.
Without a reason of existence this is not enough. If we do not address how to give value to users, especially new users steem will becomes even more worthless than it has become already.