What you're seeing are two completely different layers being conflated. The BIP110 crowd is pushing for a consensus change, the most sensitive part of the system, based on frustration with certain uses of blockspace. And the irony is: it would barely inconvenience spammers while reducing Bitcoin's expressiveness and breaking legitimate use cases. Core, on the other hand, operates at the policy layer. Relay policy isn't about deciding what Bitcoin is. It's about protecting your node from abuse -primarily DDoS and resource exhaustion- and keeping the network functioning efficiently. There is nothing you can stuff in OP_RETURN that drains resources from your node. When mempool conditions change, policy adapts. That's not whack-a-mole, that's exactly what policy is supposed to do: be flexible at the edges so consensus can remain stable at the core. Because consensus is different. Consensus is the foundation. It should change rarely, cautiously, and only with overwhelming justification. Rushing a consensus change to 'deal with spam' flips that principle on its head. So no. Core isn't reacting impulsively. They're doing the opposite: keeping consensus stable, while allowing policy to handle short-term dynamics. And that distinction is precisely what's being missed