Aaron, this is fundamentally different since no one is pushing a fork. This is mempool policy.

The mempool relay network right Now Today works and filters by default.

ALL core and knots nodes Currently have op_return filters by default.

This big contentious change is coming in core 30.

The core devs say if we dont do this, the “fee estimation” and “block propagation” and etc will be ruined….

Are you sure that Core dev team is the “small block side” in your analogy?