I don't know whether it was because of spam attacks, but it was obvious that miners were gaming on difficulty oscillations between Bitcoin and BCH which resulted in BCH having a higher hashrate than Bitcoin, but now as usual the profit-driven miners are returning. The backlog is clearing up. The good thing to come out of this is Slush Pool temporarily becoming the largest pool with 20.8%, simply great. The percentage of Segwit transactions is still around 10. LN implementation might take a few more months, but I am hoping there would be a much needed solidarity in the mining space, more non-chinese pools.
Lightning Network activation may in fact take many years, if ever, and it may require a new hard fork, Bitcoin Cash style. SegWit took more than a year to finally get activated, and what year that was! SegWit itself is a minor improvement, and while it should pave the path to LN, Lightning Network will be the last thing that Bitcoin miners would agree to. Simply because it would kill their cash cow, and their revenue flow will run dry.
And don't forget the reward halving in just two years.