I too think that it's been a bit busier than before, but not egregiously so.

Some of them are formalizations of ongoing research too, like utreexo which has been worked on since 2018/19 or so, and GSR was first formulated by Rusty somewhere early 2024, iirc.

Also, let's be honest, it does help that the new & additional BIP editors / repo maintainers have done a great job of cleaning up the accumulated debt, so it actually makes sense to propose something now.