Instances with a few hundred to a few thousands users where getting hit with several thousand people per day. Kbin.social went from 400 to a couple thousand to 50k in ~7 days. @ernest was scrambling and did a great job for a one person show. Super happy he has help now. Need to buy that guy a beer.
Beehaw was a few people, one or two with minor dev experience, and they were hammered. Kbin.social defederated and several lemmy instances were hit with bot attacks. It was chaos.