Discuit is one of the alternatives to Reddit which emerged at the same time as Lemmy (the other one being Tildes, mentioned at the end of the post)
Lemmy has 48k monthly active users (mau): https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Mbin has 862 mau: https://mbin.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Piefed has 133 mau: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
On Tildes site, I counted around 25 posts per day: https://tildes.net/?order=new
We can see that federation was indeed a better solution, looking at the difference in number of Discuit and Tildes (not federated) vs Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed
Tildes is many years old, founded by a former mod who did a lot of good work to clean up and grow /r/games like 12 years ago and eventually got hired by reddit, then left to start tildes.