The price run from spring/summer '17 is what I was referring to and the point of the experiment was to simulate a linear reward curve in order to entice people to vest/power up, which is why it was a success and what makes me think that steem blowing up from 6 cents was due to that simulation.
Thanks for the reply! There was definitely a positive mood about the linear curve around the time of HF19, so you might be right that it encouraged people to power up in the early-middle part of 2017. Philosophically, I still like the idea that voting strength was exactly proportionate to stake, so it's a shame that people eventually found so many ways to game it.