By 2018 it was the system malloc by default, so that does not add up.
[1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/55238
[2]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/01/17/Rust-1.32.0/
At the time in 2018, however, I was using Linux but now use Windows. I just now learned that Rust used the system allocator in Windows longer than for Linux [2] where it was still using jemalloc for the majority of 2018.