I'm not sure I understand these results. The uptick in whale holdings is attributed to voting, but I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Curation rewards are <25% of the reward pool, which is about 2/3 of total dilution. Combining the two means that <16% of dilution is going to curation rewards, with only a portion of that going to whales (granted it is probably a large portion). A small shift in voting behavior on that <16% probably wouldn't explain much of a larger trend.

I think something else is going on here, like whales earning more content rewards, whales powering up, and/or reduced rate of whales powering down, possibly combined with other tiers powering down. Whales earning witness rewards is also significant but probably hasn't changed much.

The use of 24-hour active numbers probably plays a role here too, especially on the whale end. One or two whales shifting between active and inactive could make a measurable difference.