What is the risk of keeping that dead code? Right now the risk of removeing the dead code is more people running knots.

This is disingenuous. The code wasn't doing nothing. Most OP_RETURNs were less than 80kbs for a reason.

Lol, dead code is when a function is called and has a deprecated feature. This is a feature that still gets called to define the standardness of a transaction. Dead code...pfft repeat things you hear some more, dude.