Leonidas proposes Bitcoin DOG Mode client to lift limits

A prominent Bitcoin Ordinals advocate has proposed a new, open-source Bitcoin client designed to remove specific transaction policy restrictions that he argues have limited the growth of on-chain assets like Ordinals and Runes. The proposal, called Bitcoin DOG Mode, was introduced by Leonidas in a social media post on Friday, July 17, 2026.

The software would function as an alternative to the widely used Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots clients. Its primary technical changes involve raising the maximum size for an individual transaction and lowering the so-called dust limit. Specifically, Bitcoin DOG Mode would increase the transaction size limit to 3.9 million weight units, a significant jump from Bitcoin Core's default of 400,000. It would also reduce the dust limit to 1 satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, from the current range of 294 to 546 satoshis required by standard nodes.

Leonidas framed these changes as a challenge to long-standing policies enforced by client software, which he claims are not part of Bitcoin's underlying consensus rules. He argued that the current limits act as unnecessary barriers, forcing users to pad transaction outputs or break up larger data...