Since OP_RETURN is a policy rule and not a consensus rule, it’s possible even before v30 to ignore the 80-byte limit and broadcast an out of band transaction. If we only use miners who accept out of band transactions then we’re essentially centralizing mining, we can circumvent a centralizing force by removing the 80-byte limit.

There’s always been lots of non-financial data in bitcoin.

Inscription fans will still probably use the old way for creating inscriptions in bitcoin because it’s cheaper.

I personally wouldn’t use knots at all. It’s not battle hardened and well tested like Core.