Here are five factors that could have played a role:
- Dan moving on to bigger and better things (potential for change under new management, people who had personal issues with Dan and were avoiding the project now having interest)
- The 'whale voting experiment' (lots of excitement from the 'regular user' base, lots of people powering up to gain influence)
- The price of STEEM hitting a new low, since pre-July price spike levels (signs that we may have found bottom)
- The end of the 90 day power downs that began with HF 16
- Some big player(s) want to affect the market for some unknown reason
I think it was likely some combination of the above. Although I'm leaning towards a new investor being the driving force...