Don’t know what the exact cause was/is for this big surge - but I am glad to see it. No matter what personal problems people may have with the main devs, they are doing great work on the platform.
Also of interest, since this is a good place to plug things, other threadiverse things:
And I couldn’t find a way to donate to mbin, in lieu of that:
https://docs.joinmbin.org/contributing/
EDIT: The creator of mbin gave a link in the comments: https://melroy.org/donate.html
As was brought up in those threads, but it’s simply not good enough, it’s just paying for .ml with extra steps (e.g. through their pay/salary rather than directly funding hosting costs)
If it’s any consolation, the admins of .ml will likely indefinitely host .ml with or without the support of patrons funding the development of Lemmy. Your support or lack thereof will never affect its operation.