It’s unclear how much these stats have helped developers who are genuinely testing soft forks. However, they seem to have convinced a number of OP_CAT supporters that signet bots can be used to justify activation on mainnet. Here are some examples from rationales on the Bitcoin Wiki:
Despite being activated just six months ago, OP_CAT has already outpaced other proposals like BIP 118 (SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, APO) and BIP 119 (OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY, CTV), which have been on signet for nearly two years. With 10 times more transactions on signet, OP_CAT’s usage dwarfs APO’s and CTV’s, showcasing its exponential adoption (source).
https://gist.github.com/catOnStack/3e9aea351346cd316e6e0dcaa195da2d
While BIP 118 (SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, APO) and BIP 119 (OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY, CTV) have been active on signet for nearly two years, OP_CAT, activated six months ago, has already seen significantly more usage. With 95101 transactions compared to APO’s 1093 and CTV’s 261, OP_CAT’s adoption is exponentially higher
https://gist.github.com/rousjiamo/309d1ddfcfa89e061bbc397838480bbb
BIP 118 (SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, APO) and BIP 119 (OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY, CTV) have been enabled on signet for nearly two years, since late 2022. More recently, BIP 347 (OP_CAT) was activated, having been available for six months. Despite of being active for only 1/4 of the time, there are significantly more on-chain transactions utilizing OP_CAT (74K) compared to APO (1K) or CTV (16), translating to 300X and 18500X more usage in a given period.
https://scryptplatform.medium.com/evaluating-bitcoin-upgrade-proposals-2df82bfe48df