BIP-110 proponents view Bitcoin as a utility whose scarce block space should be reserved primarily for monetary settlement. Registrations and other data-intensive applications represent the consumption of a limited resource that should be protected for financial transactions, even if this requires the introduction of new consensus rules.
DOG mode is based on the opposite principle.
Leonidas argued that Bitcoin should remain a neutral market for block space, where any valid transaction is also legitimate provided the sender pays the prevailing fees. From this point of view, there is no objective distinction between a Bitcoin payment and an Ordinals registration.
Rather than seeking authorization via a protocol upgrade, the intent of DOG Mode is to remove policy restrictions that its supporters say Bitcoin itself was never required to do.
The proposal also raises a more subtle question regarding Bitcoin’s infrastructure.
If enough nodes start running different policy software, the network’s memory pool (the set of unconfirmed transactions waiting to be exploited) could become increasingly fragmented. Consensus would remain intact, but different parts of the network could relay different transactions, affecting fee estimation and how quickly certain transactions reach miners.
This fragmentation already exists to some extent, but DOG mode could widen these differences by encouraging broader acceptance of transactions that many default nodes currently refuse to relay.
