Ordinals Leader Leonidas Threatens Bitcoin Core Fork Over Censorship Fears

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 ￰1￱ 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 ￰2￱ upgrade would dramatically increase support for data-heavy inscriptions that critics label “ JPEG spam .” An open letter to Bitcoin Core, Any serious attempt by Bitcoin Core to tighten policy rules or censor Ordinals and Runes transactions will be met with decisive ￰3￱ necessary, the $DOG Army will fund the development and maintenance of an open source fork of Bitcoin Core… ￰0￱ — Leonidas $DOG (@LeonidasNFT) September 6, 2025 Technical Battleground Over Data Limits Leonidas warned that any policy tightening would prompt the “$DOG Army” to develop an open-source Bitcoin Core fork stripping policy rules while maintaining consensus ￰4￱ Ordinals leader claims support from over twenty Bitcoin startups and miners controlling more than 50% of the hash ￰5￱ 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 ￰6￱ CEO Adam Back countered that 105 million JPEGs now exist on-chain, up 20% since May, with average costs of $8 per ￰7￱ characterized the activity as wasteful spam, displacing legitimate monetary transactions while pricing out new ￰8￱ 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 ￰9￱ scheduled v30 upgrade will allow multiple OP_RETURN outputs per transaction while deprecating user configuration controls over data ￰10￱ operators would lose the ability to restrict arbitrary data inclusion through local policy ￰11￱ is owned by humanity, the protocol developers are stewards, and need consensus from users to change it ￰12￱ is about money, spam has no place in the ￰13￱ defaults the bitcoin core project puts in the reference client matter in this. — Adam Back (@adam3us) September 5, 2025 Core vs.

Ordinals: The Philosophy Split The conflict centers on fundamental disagreements about Bitcoin’s primary ￰14￱ advocates preserving censorship resistance and open access as foundational principles, arguing that policy-based filtering sets dangerous precedents comparable to state transaction ￰15￱ counters that the current system allows spam to displace economic activity essential to Bitcoin’s value ￰16￱ estimates Ordinals generate roughly 1% of excess fees, translating to approximately 0.1% of miner profits after network ￰17￱ pools face pressure as the spam industry contributes $250 million annually in fees while potentially damaging Bitcoin’s reputation and pricing out legitimate ￰18￱ suggests economic lobbying mechanisms where fee-paying users direct payments toward pools filtering JPEG ￰19￱ the hashrate and input costs up, so the incremental net revenue would be less say 0.5%.

if a given miner makes 20% profit, then maybe the spam industry is 0.1% of their profit once the hashrate settles ￰20￱ really something they should focus on, as it also is bad — Adam Back (@adam3us) September 5, 2025 The debate extends beyond technical implementation to economic ￰21￱ supporters held Bitcoin’s role as a neutral base layer infrastructure supporting diverse ￰22￱ maintain focus on peer-to-peer money transfer as Bitcoin’s core ￰23￱ twenty Bitcoin startups operating economically relevant nodes have broadcast nearly half of all transactions over two ￰24￱ entities welcome expanded design space that would emerge from removing arbitrary policy restrictions beyond consensus ￰25￱ it stands now, Bitcoin Core’s market dominance faces challenges as alternative implementations gain ￰26￱ threat of a well-funded fork backed by established ecosystem participants particularly adds credibility to Leonidas’s ￰27￱ Upgrade Intensifies Tensions Bitcoin Core v30’s OP_RETURN expansion marks the most significant policy shift since the block size ￰28￱ upgrade removes decade-old spam deterrents while enabling data payloads approaching full block capacity ￰29￱ data-carrier-size configuration is set to face fundamental redefinition, allowing roughly nine times more data for equivalent numeric ￰30￱ 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 ￰31￱ OP_RETURN outputs per transaction become permissible, potentially increasing blockchain bloat and node resource requirements ￰32￱ warn the changes could raise barriers for new node operators while reducing ￰33￱ blockchain size, increased storage needs, and higher bandwidth consumption may limit network participation ￰34￱ argue that expanded capacity promotes censorship resistance while enabling Layer 2 innovations using Bitcoin as a trust ￰35￱ 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.

I don't think you need to worry about that, Core has stated why relaxed relay rules are ￰36￱ if you'd like to have fun, feel free to run a counter-Knots campaign to get as many people as possible to run Core nodes. — Jameson Lopp (@lopp) September 6, 2025 While some of the community members question Leonidas’s motivation, others, including the “$DOG Army,” are in support of his threat.