I think there will need to be a re-invention/ re-write before the 'real' lemmy happens.

The issues around discovery, identity and communities being attached to a server, and how this impacts the math of the networking aspect of the whole concept are really what is preventing Lemmy from not only beating social media like Reddit, but representing a major improvement. The project has grown enough to make that kind of re-investment of time more palatable, but as lemmy currently stands, the protocol is in the way.

• People who came here expecting a monolithic Reddit 2.0 will either leave for the hot new thing or centralize themselves on a few major mega-instances.
• Smaller instances will be their own communities (in the general sense) and those that are similar enough will form "neighborhoods" (not in a defederation sense but in an unofficial "hey we talk between each other quite a lot" kinda ad-hoc sense)
• There will be Lemmy forks (or several completely new software) that's explicitly aimed at the above mentioned smaller instances
  • Think of Glitch or Hometown over on Masto, or Akkoma
• In a defederation sense, there will be a large and complex venn diagram of instance connections as instance admins take stances between reddit-style free-for-all and safer spaces (and yes, the occasional completely freeze-peach instances that'll get defederated from both)
  • Quite a few smaller instances will defederate or otherwise limit communication (assuming the options will exist) from above mega-instances as they'll be extremely lax on moderation to not lose the Reddit free-for-all audience.

TLDR: Just look at the microblogging side of the fedi.

The way I see it there are 2 paths forward for Lemmy. Without at least one of these scenarios occuring it seems unlikely that we'll get back to a level of natural growth.

1. Reddit starts fucking up again. If this happens it'll probably be because of or sometime around the IPO so be on the lookout for that.
2. We start getting significant user growth from other fediverse platforms, likely Mastodon. These users already understand how federation works and are actively looking for a lot of the features that Lemmy has to offer on their existing platforms. I think the way to get there is primarily through topic dedicated instances springing up as professional groups find Mastodon does not truly fit their needs. One recent example of this is links.esq.social which is a brand new currently unfederated instance for lawyers and legal professionals.

I already love it here, no notes 😅

I guess if i had to make a prediction, maybe a significant chunk of the whole network will migrate over to Veilid protocol? Probably not, just throwing it out there

Lemmy.world federates with Threads and becomes the new reddit. Most people stay on it anyway since it has all communities and it's still better than reddit used to be.

Ads are introduced since big instances now needs to be funded due to their size. The ads will be federated and there will be discussions about how everyone must support this model because instance admins need to pay their bills.

An alternative to Lemmy comes along without ads. It's smaller but works in a similar way. People who cant stand ads move there instead. Eventually it gets the same problems as Lemmy has.

There will be a lot of fragmentation in the Lemmyverse. Users can't stand seeing opinions they don't support, so they will move to instances with lots of blocking and rules that support their own views. Inside this bubble they will enjoy seeing only supporting opinions and feel good while using Lemmy.