R̸̘̰̘̈́͑̚e̶̪̥̲͖̊̽̈́͒d̷̨͉̯̀͌̈́̚a̶͕̖̿́̏̏c̸͖̫̋̆̈́ť̷̛̖̜̼̘̍e̸̳̯͋̀d̸̠̳̖̣̤̋́̈́͝ on Nostr: It's kind of both but mostly the latter. The amount of data per block increases ...

It's kind of both but mostly the latter. The amount of data per block increases pretty massively as you approach the current block. It's common for more modern blocks to have several thousand transactions for every single block, where this was not the case in the early days.