A bit of that, a bit of new people realizing the potential and giving it their best shot. I've spoken to a lot of people who say that Freenet was fun, but just too damn slow to be usable.
Freenet and friends are certainly slow, or at least were when I tried them many years ago. It was never really fit for general adoption. IPFS differs in that it's trying to do this "at scale" in a way that may potentially be mass-adoptable.