Lemmy adoption will help grow federation. Lemmy is fairly easy to conceptualize as an end-user, and aside from the bleeding-edge UI/backend bugs, it is easy to use. Common users are unlikely to prefer federation due to attachment to existing communities in non-federated social media, and the 1-more-step required to properly understand instances to get the most out of Lemmy. If certain Lemmy instances hold the majority of the weight of accounts and communities, it will lead to emergent centralization towards specific instances which isn't good for federation. Persuading people who are used to centralized design not to immediately register for the largest Lemmy instance will be a long-standing conundrum for spreading out federation.