How does Op_return’s Uncapping affect long-term fee market quality and security budgets?

Is the increase in OP_Return demand bias an estimate of Mempool-based fees for normal payments (e.g., different elasticity/arrival patterns and currency TXS)?

No, op_return transactions are not specifically treated (positive or negative) in terms of fees. All transactions are treated equally, and the only distinctive factor is how willing you to pay for the fee. Whether a transaction has an OP_RETURN, an inscription, or a payment, all transactions compete for the same resource, that is, space within the block. Rate estimates should take into account all demands of block space equally.

Can a maintained op_return request crowds to pay less monetary, reducing their viability in the chain, even if the total fees rise?

Certainly, we have seen similar behavior happen before in the inscription. It’s all about supply and demand. As the supply of block space is limited, when demand increases, the price of that block space will also rise, whether it be payments, op_returns, inscriptions, etc. Ultimately, it comes down to someone who is willing to pay a higher price. Maybe the person paying is willing to pay more than create Op_returns. Probably the opposite.

However, it should be noted that payment transactions are often small and there are many coin selection strategies that can be optimized to create small transactions. Given that, even if Feerate is higher, a transaction that is simply a payment could potentially pay less absolute fees than a transaction that includes OP_Return.

Is there an analysis or simulation that shows that the higher OP_Return usage does not reduce the reliability of the settlement or lead to volatile fee dynamics than it would damage adoption?

Past actions on the network show that even when there is significant demand for block space, where adoption is still increasing, it is still increasing. See if more people are using Bitcoin as something like an inscription is happening. In general, adoptions tended to rise regardless of what was happening in the chain.

We also know that it is difficult to predict how much we will pay to enter a block from previous instances of a high transaction volume. This is probably true whether that volume is from op_returns, inscription, payment, or something else. This could affect the “reliability of the settlement” if what it means is to guess how long it will take for the transaction to be mined.

However, there is no reason to assume that increasing the OP_RETURN limit will increase the amount of transactions. The main way of data insertion on blockchain over the past few years is through inscriptions. The method of inserting data is inexpensive and allows for more data than OP_RETURN. Increasing the OP_RETURN limit does not change it, so anyone trying to insert a lot of data will rarely switch to OP_RETURN. There are very small users whose bigger OP_returns are interesting, but they don’t have a high (or actually a significant amount of) transaction volume.