ut removing OP_RETURN limits would incentivize even more non-financial use
How?
Not to mention embedding large illegal files (e.g., pirated content) easier, burdening nodes with legal risks.
They can do so more cheaply by disguising it as other parts of a transaction, this doesn't change their ability.
But users were expecting a solution to the ordinals birth last time to protect Bitcoin monetary utility.
I'm sure if someone has one which isn't trivially evaded, working in spite of major miners being offered (and accepting) millions to mine them, and somehow can't also be used to impose a state mandated blacklist ... that a lot of people would be very interested.
Especially if the idea somehow doesn't make inscriptions even more valuable and attractive by increasing their scarcity ...
But even soooo as has been pointed out, this is *independent* of the op_return limit, because removing it wouldn't have any impact on the ordinals/inscriptions stuff.
There used to be a broad understanding that relay rules were only a gentleman agreement without real force, and that as blocks filled up spam would get managed by the size limits and fees. I've been one of the most outspoken critics of shoving non-bitcoin data in transactions since probably before some current Bitcoin users were born... and I know this. How did it get forgotten?