I believe there are new node runners due to this drama. I think I have talked to some of them and I think their existence is good for bitcoin. But I don't think there are so many of them as to account for the spike we see in the charts. The same dynamics that produce more Knots users ought to produce fewer Core users, and we saw that early on, but since June it has largely stopped. The pattern on the charts can be *partly* attributed to new users choosing Knots, and I think that is great, but I think most of it it is likely attributable to someone spinning up fake Knots nodes without the ability to make the Core node count fall.