That's an informative overview. Somewhere in the story was Node.js and libuv, the callback style, promises, and the popularization of the async/await paradigm. Not sure if there was a direct influence on Rust's async libraries, but I imagine it affected how some people think what an intuitive async syntax might look like.
Particularly node.js single threaded operational model basically eradicating concurrency from the brains of a generation of developers.