Leonidas unveils "Bitcoin $DOG Mode" client to unleash 3.9M-weight-unit Ordinals txs 🚀

Ordinals advocate Leonidas has proposed a new open-source Bitcoin client called "Bitcoin $DOG Mode," designed to loosen transaction restrictions for Ordinals and Runes users. In a post to X on Friday, Leonidas said the alternative client would raise the maximum individual transaction size to 3.9 million weight units (WU), compared to Bitcoin Core's current 400,000 WU, and cut the dust limit to 1 satoshi from the existing 294–546 sats.

The technical changes target two specific pain points for Ordinals and Runes users. Increasing the maximum transaction size would allow users to place larger files or entire collections inside a single transaction, including ones that occupy close to a full block. Lowering the dust limit, which defines the smallest economically spendable transaction output, or UTXO, would reduce the need for users to "pad" outputs in order to get transactions broadcast on default Bitcoin Core nodes.

Ordinations and Runes, described as Bitcoin's versions of non-fungible and fungible tokens, have divided the Bitcoin community. Critics have labeled the activity "spam" on the network, while supporters argue the rules being enforced go beyond Bitcoin's protocol requirements. "Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots have spent years enforcing rules that Bitcoin itself does not have," Leonidas said. "The $DOG Army is done asking for permission. It is time to remove even more of these frivolous restrictions."

Bitcoin $DOG Mode would function as a third option alongside Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots, the two most widely used Bitcoin clients. Leonidas said the strategy is to draw enough users to the new client to pressure Bitcoin Core into relaxing its own policy restrictions. The proposal comes as the broader Ordinals debate continues, with figures including Bitcoin bulls Michael Saylor and Adam Back recently publicly criticizing BIP-110, a separate Ordinals-related proposal.