I've been watching my voting amounts rise for days now wondering, what in the world, since the price of STEEM was doing as you say, more or less stationary or with a slight down trend.
So, the expanding of the reward pool is interesting. I think you suggested it was because of the upvotes that were being returned to the pool by those who were still upvoting within the first several minutes of their post? That's a lot of posts.
What's going to be really interesting to see, since the voting amount at 100% has been increasing, is what it will finally look like when STEEM goes back up. I think I'm already back to where I was before the whole bear market hit months ago as far as amounts go, but I also have quite a bit more STEEM than I did then, too.
If we could get a combination of big reward pool and higher STEEM, happiness would abound. As you said, though, one step at a time. :)