Applications that use a lot of resources will have to rate-limit themselves. Otherwise, relays will rate-limit them.
It's possible if relays figure that stuff by #2 might not be an attack per se, but could be user activities... that relays might push back on that one by... - Seeking significantly higher default values committed - Seeking default action committed as off - Setting similar on their own relays if commits don't work. And by not being default off, it should be prominently documented if #2 affects users activities [1].
Indexers will distribute around it, yielding zero sum gain for the network and nodes. Multiparty onion p2p protocols could suffer though if #2 is expected to affect such things.
Was it ever discovered / confirmed what tool / usage was actually behind this recent ongoing 'DoS' phase? Whether then manifesting itself at the IP or tor protocol level.
Sorry if I missed this in all these threads.
[1] There could even be a clear section with simple named list of all options for further operator reading that could affect users activities / protocols.