Yeah, I fully agree with that, but we can only guess. 

I recall that there was a discussion in counterparty in 2015 or so about embedding in p2sh sigscript at some point but this was not implemented in the end, in favor of 1-of-3 bare ms where 2 keys are bogus and 1 is spending the utxo?

optimism

Silly me, moved a sentence and forgot to remove it at the other end. :-/

Murch

bitcoin

Giacomo Zucco on the history of filters in Bitcoin

Scoresby

Just how terribly designed BRC-20 is from top to bottom really adds insult to injury.

Interesting point about the complexity, needing to create multiple outputs and inputs would have definitely made it more expensive and a bit more complex. So, yeah, Taproot did make it easier, and if it had been harder, the BRC-20 author would have perhaps not created his proof-of-concept design for a laugh. Just how terribly designed BRC-20 is from top to bottom really adds insult to injury.