The mempool is still filled with junk.
Yes, someone is paying for it. Yes it's within consensus. No it's not possible to 'stop them' from making transactions chock-o-block with arbitrary data...
However
What purpose does this serve? And to the extent that there are still many transactions to data-blob NFTs (in the 'Witness' field)...
What is the actual point of doing this?
Do people actually buy these things?
How is this economical or profitable for the people doing it?
How can they afford to create transaction after transaction after transaction... of just purely junk?
Someone, somewhere has the sats or money to pay for this...
I presume because they believe someone else will pay them for it... otherwise why waste the money?
Bitcoiners and Bitcoin developers strive very hard to see to it that transactions are efficient, that the main chain can be used by as many people as possible, and that Bitcoin is "freedom money" available to all. Fees shouldn't be 'too high' otherwise 'no-one will use it...'
And yet, 'high fees' are no deterrent to JPEG NFT people... and they don't mind paying almost the entire UTXO in fees just to post cartoons.
Well then do the NFT people have a money printer or something? Because while people can't or won't use Bitcoin "due to the fees"...
The NFT people have serious funds to afford spamming the chain repeatedly.
People frequently say 'the fees are too high'... they're 'too high' for Lightning channels, people will be 'priced out' and it will be 'too expensive to use'...
Well the NFT people don't mind paying. Doesn't that mean the fees are too low? They don't mind paying 30$ for one transaction... is it too much then to ask regular/everyday people to pay the same to open one Lightning channel?
And if it's not 'too much' to ask... are high fees on Bitcoin really an impediment?