Ordinals ecosystem leader Leonidas issued an open letter threatening to fund a Bitcoin Core fork if developers attempt to censor Ordinals and Runes transactions, escalating tensions over Bitcoin’s future direction ahead of the controversial v30 upgrade scheduled for October 2025.
The threat emerges as Bitcoin Core v30 prepares to remove the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit, which could potentially expand on-chain data capacity to nearly 4MB per transaction.
The upgrade would dramatically increase support for data-heavy inscriptions that critics label “JPEG spam.”
Technical Battleground Over Data Limits
Leonidas warned that any policy tightening would prompt the “$DOG Army” to develop an open-source Bitcoin Core fork stripping policy rules while maintaining consensus requirements.
The Ordinals leader claims support from over twenty Bitcoin startups and miners controlling more than 50% of the hash rate.
The ecosystem has contributed over $500 million in transaction fees since 2023, though daily revenue dropped from $9.99 million in December 2023 to approximately $3,000 by August 2025.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back countered that 105 million JPEGs now exist on-chain, up 20% since May, with average costs of $8 per inscription.
He characterized the activity as wasteful spam, displacing legitimate monetary transactions while pricing out new users.
Bitcoin Knots, an alternative node implementation refusing v30’s expanded data policies, increased network share from 67 nodes in March 2024 to over 4,380 nodes representing 18% of the network.
The scheduled v30 upgrade will allow multiple OP_RETURN outputs per transaction while deprecating user configuration controls over data limits.
Node operators would lose the ability to restrict arbitrary data inclusion through local policy settings.
Core vs. Ordinals: The Philosophy Split
The conflict centers on fundamental disagreements about Bitcoin’s primary function.
Leonidas advocates preserving censorship resistance and open access as foundational principles, arguing that policy-based filtering sets dangerous precedents comparable to state transaction censorship.
Back counters that the current system allows spam to displace economic activity essential to Bitcoin’s value proposition.
He estimates Ordinals generate roughly 1% of excess fees, translating to approximately 0.1% of miner profits after network adjustments.
Mining pools face pressure as the spam industry contributes $250 million annually in fees while potentially damaging Bitcoin’s reputation and pricing out legitimate users.
Back suggests economic lobbying mechanisms where fee-paying users direct payments toward pools filtering JPEG transactions.
The debate extends beyond technical implementation to economic philosophy.
Ordinals supporters held Bitcoin’s role as a neutral base layer infrastructure supporting diverse applications.
Critics maintain focus on peer-to-peer money transfer as Bitcoin’s core mission.
Over twenty Bitcoin startups operating economically relevant nodes have broadcast nearly half of all transactions over two years.
These entities welcome expanded design space that would emerge from removing arbitrary policy restrictions beyond consensus rules.
As it stands now, Bitcoin Core’s market dominance faces challenges as alternative implementations gain adoption.
The threat of a well-funded fork backed by established ecosystem participants particularly adds credibility to Leonidas’s ultimatum.
Technical Upgrade Intensifies Tensions
Bitcoin Core v30’s OP_RETURN expansion marks the most significant policy shift since the block size wars.
The upgrade removes decade-old spam deterrents while enabling data payloads approaching full block capacity limits.
The data-carrier-size configuration is set to face fundamental redefinition, allowing roughly nine times more data for equivalent numeric values.
This technical change effectively removes user control over arbitrary data acceptance in default node configurations.
Similarly, Mempool policy shifts will accept transactions carrying significantly more non-monetary data.
Multiple OP_RETURN outputs per transaction become permissible, potentially increasing blockchain bloat and node resource requirements substantially.
Critics warn the changes could raise barriers for new node operators while reducing decentralization.
Larger blockchain size, increased storage needs, and higher bandwidth consumption may limit network participation accessibility.
Supporters argue that expanded capacity promotes censorship resistance while enabling Layer 2 innovations using Bitcoin as a trust anchor.
The October 2025 implementation timeline creates urgency around the fork threat.
Leonidas’s coalition appears prepared to maintain alternative infrastructure if Bitcoin Core proceeds with perceived censorship mechanisms.
While some of the community members question Leonidas’s motivation, others, including the “$DOG Army,” are in support of his threat.
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