Yik Yak destroyed itself by ignoring their users and making changes that undermined the reason people used their app in the first place. They're only "struggling" because of a series of self-inflicted wounds.
That doesn't mean users wanted something else; I used it originally because it was a "localized 4chan". When they started adding usernames and whatnot, I uninstalled.
That was the thing users wanted, take it away and why use the app? There are hundreds of social communities I can join, so what is YikYak's MVP? From that perspective, you have to choose what battle you want to fight - maintain anonymity and deal with the ramifications or lose your userbase by becoming just another social app?