$DOG Army Threatens Bitcoin Core With Fork Over Censorship Moves

     

Open Letter by LeonidasNFT Warns of Alternative Bitcoin Core Development to Defend Censorship Resistance

A fiery open letter addressed to Bitcoin Core developers has sparked a major debate within the Bitcoin ecosystem. LeonidasNFT, founder of the $DOG Rune token and leading voice of the Ordinals and Runes movement, issued a clear warning: any serious move by Bitcoin Core to tighten policy rules or censor certain types of transactions will be met with decisive retaliation.

LeonidasNFT stated that if necessary, the $DOG Army will fund the creation and maintenance of an open-source Bitcoin Core fork-stripping away nearly all policy rules-ensuring that Bitcoin remains a censorship-resistant network.

Defending Ordinals and Runes

The Ordinals and Runes ecosystem has contributed more than $500 million in transaction fees, strengthening Bitcoin’s security while expanding its use cases. Yet, the community claims it has been “gaslit” by critics dismissing inscriptions and meme-based assets as spam.

The letter explicitly calls out Bitcoin figures such as Adam Back and Luke Dashjr, accusing them of hypocrisy and elitism. Instead, LeonidasNFT and the $DOG Army position themselves as defenders of Bitcoin’s founding principles: open access, neutrality, and censorship resistance.

Support From Miners and Startups

According to LeonidasNFT, more than 20 Bitcoin startups running economically relevant nodes-and responsible for nearly half of all Bitcoin transactions in the last two years-would welcome a fork that removes arbitrary policy restrictions.

He also claims backing from miners representing over 50% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate, stating they are willing to accept any consensus-valid transactions with competitive fees, as long as the process is simple and secure.

A Dangerous Precedent

LeonidasNFT warns that normalizing the censorship of “JPEGs or memecoins” on Bitcoin is no different than normalizing state-driven censorship of monetary transactions. Both, he argues, would set “very dangerous precedents” that undermine Bitcoin’s neutrality.

The Core of the Dispute

At its heart, the dispute revolves around whether Bitcoin Core developers should adjust policy rules that limit or filter transactions tied to Ordinals and Runes activity, which has at times congested the network. Critics argue such measures are necessary to preserve block space for monetary transactions, while proponents say any form of censorship is an existential threat to Bitcoin’s founding values.