It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping.
Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.
Curious to see at which number we’ll stabilize.
Next peak will probably happen after either major features release (e.g. exhaustive mod tools allowing reluctant communities to move from Reddit) or the next Reddit fuck up (e.g. removing old.reddit)
Stats on each server: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if duplicate accounts are a part of this but that seems like it would be a natural part of growing pains for lemmy. The way the fediverse is built would suggest that people who are serious about long-term participation may bounce around a bit. For example, I joined in June but in that time I still managed to test out two other instances before settling on a third that seemed to strike the ideal balance between admin policies and reliable uptime to suit my needs.