Supporters of BIP-110 view Bitcoin as a public utility whose scarce block area ought to be reserved primarily for financial settlement. Inscriptions and different data-heavy purposes characterize consumption of a restricted useful resource that ought to be protected for monetary transactions, even when doing so requires introducing new consensus guidelines.
DOG Mode begins from the alternative premise.
Leonidas argued Bitcoin ought to stay a impartial market for block area, the place any legitimate transaction is equally respectable supplied the sender pays the prevailing payment. From that perspective, there isn’t a goal distinction between a bitcoin cost and an Ordinals inscription.
Quite than looking for permission by a protocol improve, the intention for DOG Mode is to take away coverage restrictions that its supporters argue Bitcoin itself by no means required.
The proposal additionally raises a extra delicate query about Bitcoin’s infrastructure.
If sufficient nodes start operating completely different coverage software program, the community’s mempool — the gathering of unconfirmed transactions ready to be mined — might change into more and more fragmented. Consensus would stay intact, however completely different components of the community might relay completely different transactions, affecting payment estimation and the way rapidly some transactions attain miners.
That fragmentation already exists to a level, however DOG Mode might widen these variations by encouraging broader acceptance of transactions that many default nodes presently refuse to relay.
