Are there any current, well known design patterns that are complemented by any kind of persistence in data access layer?
I am a .net consultant in a very large market (13 years) and never once have I been approached by any client who has asked me to design a service layer that requires any kind of state i.e. tracking. Also, for the many large clients I have worked for, none of them have software running in their organization that implements such a design.

Entity Framework Core is supposedly a new beginning for EF yet tracking remains a core design feature. If no one uses designs that require or even use EF's tracking features than why is tracking still part of the framework?

Here is how I use EF in a stateless service layer i.e. REST or WCF

User requests data:

using(context = new DbContext()) { // get some data and dispose context } 

User modifies data and posts:

using(context = new DbContext()) { // add or update as necessary and dispose } 

In above example we create two instances of the context - neither depends on the other or needs tracking/state. For data I need fast access too I use a cache or dictionary.