Mastodon is benefitting from the #X exodus (eXodus?) too: The official app downloads are up 47% on iOS and 17% on Android. Sign-ups are up approx. 27% compared to previous month with about 90K new accounts, while the MAU has jumped to 894K (across all Mastodon servers).
We may not be the biggest by numbers yet, but Mastodon (and the fediverse) has proven itself to be an effective and reliable communications platform over the course of the last 8 years, and does not depend on venture capital to survive. The #fediverse is the future.
I spent 25% of my life working on Mastodon. It's kind of wild when you think about it. When I started, Google+ was still around. We're doing what one of the most resourceful companies in the world couldn't do. It's not easy. It's always easier to just build A Website, then slap some ads on it. But the fediverse is the long game.