Crypto news

Runestone co-founder under the pseudonym Leonidas has announced the launch of a new open-source Bitcoin client called DOG Mode. Unlike the controversial BIP-110 proposal, activating this solution requires only a single miner — no majority vote is needed. This fundamentally changes the dynamics of implementing changes in the first cryptocurrency's network.

The client introduces two key changes to transaction relay policy. The first is an increase in the maximum transaction size in weight units (WU) from 400,000 to 3.9 million. For comparison, an entire Bitcoin block holds 4 million WU. Thus, the new rule covers nearly the entire block volume. The second change is a reduction of the "dust limit" (minimum output size) from 294–546 satoshis to 1 satoshi.

These adjustments will significantly simplify the sending of Ordinals inscriptions and Runes — Bitcoin analogs of NFTs and fungible tokens. Both technologies remain a controversial topic in the community: critics call them "spam," yet demand for them is steadily growing. Leonidas stated: "Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots have imposed rules for years that consensus itself does not require. The DOG army is no longer waiting for permission — it's time to remove excessive restrictions."

A higher transaction ceiling will allow sending files and entire collections nearly the size of a full block. Currently, Core rejects such transfers as "non-standard," even though they are technically valid. Therefore, they are conducted through direct channels with miners — for example, the Slipstream service from MARA. The second change — the "dust limit" — will free Ordinals and Runes from extra satoshis in each output. According to the developer's estimate, this will release about $25 million in "excess" satoshis.

It is important to emphasize: Leonidas's proposal concerns not network consensus, but relay policy — the rules by which a node decides whether to forward a transaction further or not. DOG Mode will cancel them at the individual node level, so no threshold of miner support is needed for activation. Implementing the controversial BIP-110 requires 55% of the network's hashrate, but at the time of writing, support for this fork has dropped below 1%.

My expert analysis. DOG Mode is an elegant bypass of bureaucratic barriers that have slowed Bitcoin's development as a token platform for years. Instead of waiting for miner consensus, Leonidas offers a targeted solution at the client level. However, this could lead to network fragmentation if too many nodes begin applying different relay policies. Nevertheless, for Ordinals and Runes, this is a step forward that could attract a new wave of developers.