Ordinals advocate Leonidas proposes new Bitcoin client: ‘$DOG Mode’

Bitcoin Ordinals advocate Leonidas has proposed developing a new open-source Bitcoin client, aimed at removing restrictions affecting Runes and Ordinals transactions. 

In a post to X on Friday, Leonidas called the proposed client “Bitcoin $DOG Mode,” which would lift the maximum individual transaction size to 3.9 million weight units (WU), compared to Bitcoin Core’s 400,000 WU, and lower the dust limit to 1 satoshi (sats) from 294-546 sats.

The changes would make it easier to send Ordinals inscriptions and Runes, which have been described as Bitcoin’s take on fungible and non-fungible tokens. Both have been controversial within the Bitcoin community, with critics arguing they amount to “spam” on the Bitcoin network. 

“Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots have spent years enforcing rules that Bitcoin itself does not have,” Leonidas said in a statement. “The $DOG Army is done asking for permission. It is time to remove even more of these frivolous restrictions.”

Increasing the maximum transaction size would make it easier for Ordinals users to place much larger files or collections into one transaction, even ones that take up nearly an entire block. 

Meanwhile, the dust limit is a rule on the Bitcoin network defining the smallest transaction amount, or UTXO, that can be economically sent. Lowering the dust limit would stop users from having to “pad” outputs to get their transaction broadcast on default Bitcoin Core nodes.

Bitcoin $DOG Mode would be an alternative to Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots, the two most widely used Bitcoin clients.

Leonidas said the goal is to attract enough users to the new client that Bitcoin Core would eventually have to loosen its own policy restrictions.