For me it's difficult to find an explanation as well, but in my experience the increase of difficulty is a good sign. It sometimes precedes the rebirth of coin.
But is it possibile that someone is trying to perform the 51% attack?
I think it's not because it was just a short spike, wich by the way was just a double of something pretty normal we have had from October 10, 2019 to November 3, 2019.

Important Update 2019-12-08: Freiexchange is offering to us the possibility to advertise SLM this week on their new newsletters channel as a featured coin. We need to provide an image and the text. What concepts would you like to put into?