Knots vs Core is an example of Bitcoin anti fragility in action. It’s an example of the cyber hornets rising and buzzing in defence of the network. It looks chaotic and unstructured, but is a manifestation of the inherent resilience of #Bitcoin.
One reason the debate is polarised is that the underlying problem may not be recognised. The only reason to have a mempool is not just fee estimation, it is also to construct block templates for mining. Since such template production is, in practice, centralised enough that we can successfully submit transactions directly to large pools, the real solution to this issue may be linked to the efforts to decentralise the majority of block template production - like what Ocean and others are doing.
The actual problem or solution isn’t clear to me, but we’ll get there, eventually.