I think the fact that Cryptsy finished selling their coins 450K+ DASH sold over the last year took a lot of artificial sell pressure out of the market.  Also, took away the uncertainty of what would happen when they finally closed down and it was a relieve for the market that there was no dump as a result of Cryptsy closing doors.

Other than that Dash has been working hard over the last year to bring new functionality on governance and funding that the general crypto markets are proving to be key for long term sustainability.