They may or may not. How does that matter? If there's more demand they'll widen, if there's less they'll restrict it. With the current enlarged system they likely have enough flexibility to do either with accurate placement of slots.

Keep in mind how much slots roll down may not even be a performance indicator for Ironman. They likely care more about if they sell them at all, sell them to new people who get tied to the sport for the long term and inspire new people to take on the challenge.

There's no doubt IM is going through a transition phase. The old solution worked for a while and they've outgrown that and now they're trying to find a new balance.

It feels like you're trying to convince me of something.
You value a WC run a certain way and I accept that and respect that. I believe that tying the WC to Kona restricts our sport and makes it less inclusive (a WC shouldn't always require 36h flights to an expensive resort at -12 time zone). The examples from other sports show that rotating WC and wider qualifying standards is the norm (I obviously haven't listed them, there's all variations of grey, you can do your own research if you care).

Ironman is clearly trying to keep a compromise between the advantages of keeping Kona and of moving out of it.