As you noticed, I had to temporarily enable DDoS protection. Someone is trying quite effectively to distract me from my activities ;p Unfortunately, this may cause some issues with the federation. I will try to cut off the traffic as soon as possible and return to normal operation. Thank you for all your support and patience! :)
Honestly, the site is far more responsive than it was yesterday. Keep doing what you’re doing.
It’s likely there is also a bunch of other tuning happening and this is unrelated to performance increases, but I stand by comment.