> prominent influencers onboard with your decentralized social network
That's sort of a contradiction, no? Or at least it assumes transplanting the same mechanisms into a new milieu -- which I argue is something to leave behind, because it's those very mechanisms that have ruined the current internet.
I think instead of tapping into the same addictive attention economy schemes, the distributed / decentralized socials could onboard people en-masse by providing what's missing there, and filling a real need.
Even if they fill a real need, their go-to-market strategy will determine whether the masses even know about them, or give a damn about trying them out in the first place.