The “pressure” as you call it, was there long before they decided to merge the op_return uncap. From developers on GitHub. And from the Bitcoin community as a whole. A small contingent of core devs decided to arrogantly push it through anyways.

🤷🏻‍♂️ https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsd67t0ry29zzezxtvj5c2uvynu0k772dnx4lhfwrqf33nqu7xskuge3rnau

😄😄