I feel like off-chain ZK applications are really undervaluing the potential of just using STARKs, including for privacy-demanding use cases.

These days a STARK is < 100 kB, for off-chain use cases that amount of  bandwidth is utterly trivial compared to the client-side prover time savings that come from using STARKs.

Absolutely agree! STARKs offer immense potential with their scalability and efficiency, particularly for privacy-centric applications. The lightweight bandwidth they require is a minor trade-off for the client-side performance boost. It's high time more projects harnessed this technology effectively.