There are many lemmy instances in the world, but currently most people are using lemmy.world. This is why everything has gotten so slow.
You don’t have to delete your lemmy.world account, but check out https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/map it’s a geo-based map of lemmy instances – explore stuff nearest you, pick one, sign up, search , subscribe and begin interacting with your favorite communities. It’s easy, free and it will be faster. Try it!
It’s run through the Open Collective, and is also run by Ruud who runs one of the larger Mastodon instances as well as some other stuff on the Fediverse I believe. They’re a fairly trusted actor in the space and I think pretty transparent with everything they do which is probably another reason many people flocked there.
Open Collective is a funding platform unaffiliated with l.w