Took a huge step in the right direction?

Heyyy IH, I'm Moyo and i run NFT Hunt ( https://nfthunt.softr.app )
So, initially when i first started out with NFT Hunt, I had an Homepage then you sign up to Upvote or even see any art. That was enough to get me a lot of views but not much Sign up just people snooping around.
After watching the Hotjar recordings i decided to let the site be more or less like product Hunt where you have to sign up to UPVOTE, within the first 4 days there was a crazy spike got 30 Users and a lot of Views from people who discover the NFT Then go to the Purchase page.
But after a week i got 0 sign ups more was stuck at 47 users and no way to calculate retention.
I then decided to change to, VISIT, UPVOTE AND GO
This was a silver bullet, i had have seen growth within the last 2 months but no way to retain users as i do not have their mail, i had a newsletter but out of the total 200+ upvoters i'll get <10 mails

Views are dope and consistent but not scalable or even great,
Now i'm back to the Product Hunt way

IS THIS THE RIGHT DECISION?