> The widespread deployment of NAT and VPNs has counter acted the market forces that were assumed to make IPv6 appealing.

Tell that to everyone who is behind CG-NAT and has issues with (e.g.) video games. Or all the (small(er)) ISPs that have to layout CapEx for translation boxes.

IPv4 addresses are still expensive. NAT is a value add for a lot of cloud platforms.

IPv6 has arguably done more to counteract market forces related to IPv4 address exhaustion.