Miners' daily income breaks through 100 million, setting a record. Can Bitcoin Runes take over the inscription wave?

Due to the new expectations brought by the founder of Ordinals, the popularity of "Runes" launched on the day of Bitcoin halving soared in the short term. It can be said that the Bitcoin chain was extremely busy that day, and Bitcoin transaction fees soared. Transactions of hundreds or thousands of US dollars were everywhere, which not only caused congestion in the Bitcoin network, but also made Kuang Gong's daily income exceed 100 million US dollars, setting a record high.

Author | Day

Produced by｜Baihua Blockchain

Due to the new expectations brought by the founder of Ordinals, the popularity of "Runes" launched on the day of Bitcoin halving soared in the short term. It can be said that the Bitcoin chain was extremely busy that day, and Bitcoin transaction fees soared. Transactions of hundreds or thousands of US dollars were everywhere, which not only caused congestion in the Bitcoin network, but also made Kuang Gong's daily income exceed 100 million US dollars, setting a record high.

Since its launch after the halving, it has accounted for more than two-thirds of Bitcoin's trading volume. In addition, several mainstream platforms such as UniSat, OKX, MagicEden, etc. have also successively supported the Rune market. As this period of fermentation progresses, let's take a brief look at some of the current progress related to the Rune track:

01. What exactly are runes?

Rune is a new Bitcoin Token protocol proposed by Casey, the founder of Ordinals protocol. Its goal is to solve the problems associated with BRC-20Token, especially the congestion of Bitcoin network and poor user experience caused by a large number of junk UTXO (unspent transaction output).

Advantages of Runes:

1) Simplifies the process of creating alternative tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain and reduces the use of on-chain resources.

2) Compared with other solutions, such as BRC-20, RGB, and Taproot, Bitcoin Rune provides users with a simpler way to create and manage tokens, which can improve the usability and interchangeability of tokens while avoiding the generation of a large number of useless UTXOs.

3) Rune uses the OP_RETURN model. Compared with the BRC-20 Token taking up a lot of space, the storage method of Rune saves more Bitcoin network resources.

4) Since Rune inherits Bitcoin’s UTXO model and is highly compatible with the Bitcoin blockchain, it can be seamlessly integrated with the Bitcoin ecosystem, so Rune Token is able to enjoy the security and stability of the Bitcoin network.

It can be said that the Rune protocol is simpler, more efficient, and more developer-friendly than the BRC-20 protocol.

Some others feel that the current rune names are too long and not as meme-able as the four-character BRC-20 inscriptions. The reason is that Casey designed it this way to prevent name squatting. The naming length is 1-26 characters, but at the beginning, only names with more than 13 characters can be etched. With every 17,500 blocks, the minimum number of naming letters will be reduced by one character. In almost four years, all names can be used, thus creating a dynamic naming environment.

02. Several major platforms that support runes

At present, the platforms that support rune casting are mainly concentrated in UniSat, OKX, and MagicEden. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages, and generally these three are sufficient.

 Transaction proportion of each market, source: https://geniidata.com/user/poshi/runes-market-overview

Unisat and MagicEden both have the function of bulk purchase, and their depth is better than OKX in all aspects. The reason for this is that overseas users prefer to use Unisat, and the popularity of Rune is higher overseas than in China. I usually use Unisat and MagicEden for comparison, and use OKX for new listings.

As can be seen from the gas on the Bitcoin chain, the overall popularity of Rune is not high. Recently, the voice of FUD (abbreviation of fear, uncertainty, doubt) has gradually been heard. Most KOLs complained about the new system of Rune Protocol, which is high gas volume casting, and then the floor is rolled after casting. Moreover, the handling fee has blocked most buyers who sweep orders (when the gas is high, the purchase may be cut in half), resulting in only selling but no buying, and finally making the floor roll on roll, which will only make Kuang workers cheaper in the end.

As for whether Rune can develop in the future, it is still unknown. After all, it took several months for BRC-20 to become popular.

03. High-quality rune characteristics

At present, the gameplay of runes is actually similar to that of memes, and traffic is still king. Here are a few criteria for reference:

1) Are there any well-known KOLs with their own traffic: Support from famous artists and other celebrities, like Casey, and KOLs related to various top projects.

2) Special meaning: Like SATOSHI•NAKAMOTO Satoshi Nakamoto, or related to some top projects.

3) Public support from top project owners or communities: Top Bitcoin NFTs such as SHIB, Node Monkey, and Puppet Monkey have begun to support the creation of runes.

4) Number of Holder Addresses: The number of addresses is generally related to popularity and how many people are involved.

5) Is there any pre-mining? What is the percentage? Generally speaking, unless the concept is particularly good, the runes with pre-mining are relatively pitfalls.

All kinds of new things come out in an ever-changing manner, and often comprehensive judgment is required.

04. Rune Classification

Currently, runes are divided into three main categories:

1) Airdrop type, led by the project owner:

Projects launched by Ordinals OG (Original gangster), such as Runestone and RSIC, directly snapshot NFT holders. Generally, NFT will plummet after the snapshot ends.

Well-known projects on ETH or other chains, such as Prometheans.

2) KOLs and artists

Influential KOLs like Casey and LEO are calling out orders. You need to have some understanding of KOLs. Some people call out a new one every few days, and no one can stand that.

3) Specific special meaning

Rune 0, UNCOMMON•GOODS, takes four years to complete, which is similar to the Sats of BRC-20, with a long time period. SATOSHI•NAKAMOTO (Satoshi Nakamoto), the concept of Satoshi Nakamoto, everyone understands.

• Runes 0–9

  Rune No. 0 UNCOMMON•GOODS: deployed by Casey, the founder of Ordinals, no pre-mining, unlimited mining for 4 years, anyone can participate, a bit like sats in BRC-20, with a large total amount and a long time, so it can be planned in the bear market.

  Rune No. 1 is Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•FEHU•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z, with a total of 100 million and 99.99% pre-mined. There was a lot of speculation in the past few days, and retail investors bet that the project party would destroy the pre-mined, but then the project party tweeted that it would Airdrop the pre-mined part.

  Rune No. 2 is DECENTRALIZED, which belongs to the old blue chip of Ethereum NFT cyberkongz. It is 100% pre-mined, and part of it is Airdropped to Prometheans NFT holders. The price of Prometheans is also rising.

  Rune No. 3 DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON belongs to runestone, 100% pre-mined, and has been Airdropped to runestone holders. The overall market value is about 400 million US dollars, which is considered the current rune leader. The founder is extremely active on Twitter and has been promoting DOG.

  Rune No. 4 THE•RUNIX•TOKEN, a project of RuneChain under the L2 project BVM, is 100% pre-mined. The holders of its NFT Runer can mine kuang to obtain runes.

  Rune No. 5 DOG•DOG•DOG•DOG•DOG, anonymous team, 100% pre-mined, no details yet.

  Rune No. 6 SATOSHI•NAKAMOTO (Satoshi Nakamoto) , 20% pre-mining, is relatively popular and has been listed on some small exchanges. The only complaint is that the project party’s pre-mining ratio is too high.

  Rune No. 7 MEME•ECONOMICS, anonymous team, pre-mining 20%, the chips are too concentrated.

  Rune No. 8 RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE belongs to RSIC, 100% pre-mined, and has been Airdropped to previous RSIC mining users based on the points ratio. The project owner has chips in hand and launched OKX Jumpstart yesterday.

  Rune No. 9 LOBO•THE•WOLF•PUP, deployed by Buoyant Capital, 100% pre-mined, has been Airdropped to Runestone and Rune Doors holders, leaving a small portion for project operations.

  It can be seen that runes 0-9 are all led by the project party, most of which are 100% pre-mined and then Airdropped to their project holders.

• Meme Theme

  WANKO•MANKO•RUNES: Casey's concept. After the rune was completed, Casey commented and tweeted to express his appreciation for the rune. In addition, Casey also retweeted the rune-related tweets many times.

  ANARCHO•CATBUS: Casey concept, Casey mentioned the related concept many times on Twitter, and the relevant tags were always added in the Twitter introduction, that is, Casey never milked the related runes. ("Milk project" is crypto slang, referring to a high-risk investment project in the field of cryptocurrency that lacks real value support and relies only on the continuous introduction of new investors' funds to pay returns.)

SEPPUKU•IN•MAY•AND•GO•AWAY： Casey concept, on the day of the rune deployment, Casey, the founder of Ordinals, posted on the social media platform to express his concern for the rune, and within a few hours, the rune was sold out. The meme comes from Casey's previous tweet that if the market value of the rune ecosystem does not reach 1 billion US dollars in the first month of its launch, he is ready to commit suicide.
Here are mainly a few mentioned by Casey. The founder of Runestone, Leo, has also healed several of them , such as ORDINALS•ARE•DEAD, CASEYS•MOM•HAS•GOT•IT•GOING•ON, etc. If you are interested, you can check them out by yourself. However, since there are too many runes for these healers, most of them ended up performing mediocrely. Here is just to give you a direction to find runes.

• Community-led
  BITCOIN•PEPE•MATRIX : PEPE concept, the rune uses the magical pepe emoticon and the 69 420 concept mentioned by Musk before, which attracted a lot of attention. The artist who called the order has drawn the Rare Pepes series.
  There are almost no community-led initiatives at the moment, so I’ll just list one here.

05. Summary

The above is the introduction to runes. It can be seen that the current development of runes is very rough. It can also be seen from the recent on-chain fees of Bitcoin that the popularity of runes has dropped rapidly. However, as the mainstream narrative of this round of major market conditions, the Bitcoin ecosystem is still worthy of attention.

Maybe after a while, the wind direction will change again. Players who play more on the chain should keep an open attitude towards this new thing. Of course, the handling fee is expensive, and you must pay attention to the risks. Many people have been "buried" in it.