Ordinals Dev Floats Forking BTC Core Amid Censorship Concerns

Leonidas, a well-known member of the BTC Ordinals community and host of The Ordinal Show, has made a : if developers try to block Ordinals and Runes transactions, they should pay for an open-source fork of BTC Core. 

He sent an open letter on X, warning that making policy regulations stricter to stop these non-financial transactions creates a “dangerous precedent” for censorship-resistant ethos. This threat comes at a time when there is a lot of disagreement in the BTC community about what the blockchain is for and how large it can get.

The Argument Over Ordinals and Runes

The is over whether BTC should focus on peer-to-peer financial transactions or allow transactions that use a lot of data, like Ordinals and Runes, which have pictures, movies, and documents. Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Ocean Mining’s Luke Dashjr, and Satoshi Action Fund CEO Dennis Porter are among those who say these transactions are “spam” that sluggish down the network, raise fees, and take the place of regular financial activity. 

Leonidas, on the other hand, says that Ordinals and Runes have brought in more than $500 million in transaction fees, which makes BTC securer when subsidies go down because of halvings that happen every so often.

Support from Miners and Economic Effects

Leonidas says that miners who control more than 50% of BTC’s support him and are willing to process any transaction for a low fee. But the effects of Ordinals on the economy are not always the identical. 

On August 31, 2025, miners made only $3,060 from Ordinals, down from a high of $9.99 million in December 2023. This suggests that they are seasonal. Leonidas, on the other hand, says that these transactions are significant for miners who are getting less block rewards.

Suggested Fork and the Split in the Community

The suggested split would get rid of BTC Core’s tight policy requirements, making it resistant to censorship and letting thousands of nodes use it. This action is similar to prior arguments, such as the block size wars in 2017, when differences in beliefs caused forks like BTC Cash. 

People who support Ordinals view BTC as a neutral base layer for a wide range of applications. Purists, on the other hand, think it should only be used for financial transactions. The 80-byte OP_RETURN limit will be removed in the next BTC Core v30 upgrade, which is slated for October 2025. This will make the gap even worse by allowing larger data payloads.

A Test for the Future of BTC

Leonidas’s threat brings up a largeger question: should BTC change to support diverse uses, or should it stay faithful to its original idea of being digital cash? As the community deals with this, the possible fork might change BTC’s ecosystem, making it less dominant and testing its commitment to .