The evolution of node versions and software packages can give some hints on what the people who hodl and accept Bitcoin are also thinking about certain features, above all the "power users" (who tend to have relatively large holdings).
I don't disagree, but it's one of those things which is more vulnerable to
Goodhart's law than most thing. So it's kind of a heisen-hint. It may give a hint at any point in time but as soon as someone starts looking at it or even advocating for it without looking then its value as a hint vanishes.
E.g. with this, lots of knots advocacy but apparently eliminating datacenters from the figures drops a vast super-majority of the numbers (per reports, I haven't checked myself) and even what remain-- how many of them are guarding a users funds, were running a year ago or will be running a year from now? This isn't a knock on knots users at this point but any kind of advocacy will probably scramble the usefulness of it as a hint. This is particularly true because of how cheap throwing up a 'node' and not using it for anything is... under normal times you'd expect a large portion of nodes to be "in use" (why run it otherwise), but when there is a campaign? who knows.