Me too, I tried to make a lemmy account and it wouldn't work at first, and then when it did work it wouldn't let me log in. I can't imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would be if it was one of the instances that required an essay to apply for membership.
I tried kbin and it worked first try, no problems at all. I figured I would run into the same problem I had trying to join lemmy but didn't have a problem at all.
I can't imagine how many more people would be signing up to the federation if it just worked first try.
Dio