Some of our developments that are being worked on should help.

The removal of the team requirement planned for next release should help get more users who already use BOINC to use Gridcoin.

There's been more discussion around manual rewards claim (MRC) which should allow new people to more easily start. Instead of having staking being the only way to earn rewards, you can manually claim your rewards. (with a fee compared to regular staking to still encourage staking). This should help with the retention of new users.