DOG model: Bitcoin does not require miners 'approval

Bitcoin developers launch DOG Mode: You can bypass soft fork restrictions without miners voting

Bitcoin developer Leonidas has released the DOG Mode client, which skips the miners voting session normally required for soft forks. Foundry, the largest mining pool, has remained publicly silent on the BIP-110 proposal, which currently has a signal support rating of nearly 1%. DOG Mode increased the actual transaction size limit from 400,000 weight units to 3.9 million weight units and reduced the dust limit to 1 Cong. Removing this dust threshold would free up approximately $25 million in Bitcoin-funds currently locked up as padding bytes needed for transfers from Ordinals and Runes.

The battle for data-intensive transactions reaches a turning point

On July 17, Bitcoin's battle over data-intensive transactions took an unexpected turn. Ordinals developer Leonidas has released specifications for DOG Mode, a node client designed to make the entire BIP-110 voting battle irrelevant. BIP-110 originally required an absolute majority of miners to activate a soft fork, which limited transaction output to 34 bytes and OP_RETURN data to 83 bytes. However, voting stalled: signal support was only about 1%, far short of the 55% threshold needed before the activation deadline in early August. DOG Mode does not require any miner to vote on anything, but instead rewrites the local relay rules that determine which transactions nodes forward. As long as a large mining company runs the client, it can directly extract ultra-large, high-fee transactions from the memory pool, no matter what the rest of the network agrees to reject.

Collective absence of large mining pools: BIP-110's prospects are worrying

Foundry USA, which controls approximately one-third of Bitcoin's computing power, has not made any public statements on BIP-110 or expressed support. AntPool also remained silent, while F2Pool publicly opposed the proposal. The almost complete absence of large mining pools has resulted in the existing approximately 1% of signal support being borne almost entirely by the Ocean mining pool co-founded by Luke Dashjr, and a few independent small miners. Michael Saylor bluntly explained why he believed the proposal should fail, arguing that turning a controversy about spam into a revision of consensus rules risked nullifying transactions that were otherwise fully valid.

DOG Mode changes node forwarding rules, not network verification rules.

The key to making this battle different from ordinary Bitcoin governance disputes is the boundary between consensus rules and relay strategies. Consensus rules define the valid blocks accepted by the network as a whole; relay policies are simply local software configurations, which are settings for individual nodes to decide which transactions are worth forwarding to peers before blocks are mined. Bitcoin core sets a single transaction cap at 400,000 weight units, but this was never a protocol requirement-it was just a default value. The chain itself can accommodate up to 4 million weight units of blocks. DOG Mode simply removes this self-imposed filter, allows transactions of up to 3.9 million weight units to pass through, and reduces the dust limit from the usual 294 to 546 sengs to 1 sengs. Leonidas viewed the move as a belated amendment, saying restrictions imposed by Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots over the years were in fact never prohibited by the protocol itself.

Technical comparison: BIP-110 vs DOG Mode

Target level: BIP-110 is for consensus rules, and DOG Mode is for relay policies.
Activation path: BIP-110 requires 55% miner signal support and UASF flag day. DOG Mode only requires one miner to run the client.
Maximum transaction size: BIP-110 limits output/data size, and DOG Mode increases 400,000 weight units to 3.9 million weight units.
Dust Limit: BIP-110 enforces 294-546 Cong, and DOG Mode is reduced to 1 Cong.
Current status (July 17): BIP-110 signal support is about 1%, DOG Mode specification has been released and is seeking miner adoption.

Why is one rebel miner enough for this scheme to work?

A block mined following DOG Mode relay settings still needs to satisfy Bitcoin's actual consensus rules, so the rest of the network has no good reason to reject it. This is the key. Miners chase fee income ahead of ideology, and a project willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to squeeze a very large transaction into a block will give the miners who accept it huge gains that no one else on the network can veto. Adam Back sees this as an "honest version" of Bitcoin that should have always worked, telling BIP-110 supporters that the only legal way to impose restrictions on the network is to organize a fork rather than relying on soft fork voting to determine what constitutes acceptable use.

Impact on trapped Ordinary liquidity and home node operators

The practical impact of lowering the dust limit to 1 Cong goes far beyond the ideological debate: it would free up about $25 million in Bitcoin, which is currently idle in the form of forced bytes in Ordinals and Runes transactions. Once miners running DOG Mode start accepting transactions constructed based on the new minimum, this capital will be available. The cost is reflected on the other end of the ledger. Jameson Lopp warned that once the network accepts that any participant can push for a change in the definition of "effective activity," the argument for the next limit will become easier, not more difficult, and Bitcoin's image as a "permission-free currency" will be eroded. If blocks are frequently filled to the range of 3.9 million weight units, the total size of the chain will grow at a faster rate; if this growth exceeds the comfortable storage and verification capabilities of ordinary consumer-class machines, running home nodes will no longer be realistic for a considerable number of existing operators.

Outstanding issue: Compatibility gaps will determine the rate of liquidity release

The issue of openness is not whether DOG Mode is technically effective-because there is no violation of consensus rules at all. The question is, before BIP-110 sign day (early August) arrives, will any miners other than the original supporters actually switch over? And will exchanges and wallet providers treat transactions built under the loose restrictions of DOG Mode as standard, or will they flag them as non-compliant before the rest of the ecosystem catches up? This compatibility gap-independent of miners 'decisions-is likely to determine how quickly the released liquidity actually flows.