Ordinals advocate Leonidas proposes new Bitcoin client: ‘$DOG Mode’“Over time the economic incentives will drive $DOG Mode’s adoption and force Bitcoin Core to stop gatekeeping and allow these completely valid transactions,” said Leonidas.
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Bitcoin Ordinals advocate Leonidas has proposed creating a new open-source Bitcoin client named “Bitcoin $DOG Mode,” designed to remove key restrictions currently impacting transactions involving Runes and Ordinals. This new client aims to raise the maximum individual transaction size from the existing 400,000 weight units (WU) in Bitcoin Core to 3.9 million WU, nearly the size of an entire block. It also plans to reduce the dust limit—the smallest amount of bitcoin that can be sent economically—from approximately 294-546 satoshis to just 1 satoshi.
These changes are intended to facilitate the easier transfer of Ordinals inscriptions and Runes, which function as Bitcoin’s versions of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and fungible tokens. Ordinals have been controversial in the Bitcoin community, with some critics viewing them as a form of network spam. Leonidas criticized existing popular clients like Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots for enforcing rules that he believes are unnecessary and not part of Bitcoin’s original protocol, signaling that the $DOG Mode client is meant to challenge these limitations by offering a less restrictive alternative.
If adopted, Bitcoin $DOG Mode could significantly streamline transactions involving large or multiple Ordinal and Rune inscriptions, potentially encouraging broader use and acceptance of these assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. Lowering the dust limit would also remove the need to “pad” transaction outputs to meet size requirements, potentially reducing costs and improving transaction efficiency for smaller outputs. Leonidas hopes that increased adoption of his client will pressure Bitcoin Core to relax its policies over time.
The initiative represents a notable divergence from mainstream Bitcoin development and points to ongoing tensions within the community about the role and extent of restrictions on transaction sizes and data embedding within Bitcoin blocks. Should $DOG Mode gain traction, it may shift how Bitcoin handles complex or data-heavy transactions, especially those tied to Ordinals and similar token types, influencing the network’s future development path.