Miners’ daily income breaks through 100 million, setting a record. Can Bitcoin runes take over from inscriptions?

Source: Vernacular Blockchain

Due to the new expectations brought by the founder of Ordinals, the short-term popularity of "Runes" launched on the day of Bitcoin halving has soared. It can be said that the Bitcoin chain was extremely lively on that day, and Bitcoin handling fees soared. Transactions of hundreds and thousands of US dollars were everywhere, which not only caused congestion on the Bitcoin network, but also made Kuang'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 transaction volume. In addition, several mainstream platforms such as UniSat, OKX, MagicEden have also successively supported the Rune market. With the fermentation of this period, let's take a brief look at some of the current progress related to the Rune track:

01 What exactly is a Rune?

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

Advantages of Rune:

1) It simplifies the process of creating fungible 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 situation where BRC-20 tokens take up a lot of space, Rune's storage method saves more Bitcoin network resources.

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

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

Others feel that the current Rune names are too long and are not meme-worthy enough compared to 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 before, 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

Currently, the platforms that support casting runes are mainly UniSat, OKX, and MagicEden. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Generally, these three are enough.

The transaction share of each market, source: https://geniidata.com/user/poshi/runes-market-overview

Unisat and MagicEden have batch sweeping functions, 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 runes is higher overseas than in China. Personally, I usually use Unisat and MagicEden for comparison, and use OKX for new listings.

It can be seen from the gas on the Bitcoin chain that the overall popularity of Rune is not high at present. Recently, there has been a gradual increase in FUD (abbreviation of fear, uncertainty, doubt) voices. Most KOLs complain about the new listing system of Rune Protocol, which is high-gas rolling casting, and then rolling the floor after casting. Moreover, because of the handling fee, most buyers who sweep orders are blocked (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 be cheaper for Kuang workers.

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 from its release.

03 High-quality Rune Features

Currently, the gameplay of Rune is similar to Meme, and traffic is still king. Several criteria for judgment, for reference:

1) Whether there is a well-known KOL with its own traffic: Supported by famous artists and other celebrities, such as Casey, and KOLs related to various top-tier projects.

2) Special meaning: Like Satoshi Nakamoto, or those related to certain top-tier projects.

3) Public support from top-tier project parties or communities: Top-tier Bitcoin NFTs such as SHIB or 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, how many people are involved.

5) Whether there is pre-mining: What is the proportion? Generally, unless the concept is particularly good, runes with pre-mining are relatively pitfalls.

Various new things come out in a myriad of ways, and often a comprehensive judgment is required.

04 Rune Classification

Current runes are mainly divided into three categories:

1) Airdrop type, led by the project party:

Ordinals OG (Original gangster, meaning veteran) Projects, such as Runestone and RSIC, directly snapshot to NFT holders, and generally NFT will usher in a sharp drop after the snapshot;

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

2) KOL shouting, artists

Influential KOLs such as Casey and LEO shouting, here you need to know something about KOLs, some people shout a new one every few days, this is unbearable for anyone.

3) Specific special meanings

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

• Runes 0–9

Rune 0 UNCOMMON•GOODS:Deployed by Casey, the founder of Ordinals, no pre-mining, unlimited mining for 4 years, anyone can participate, a bit like the sats in BRC-20, large total amount, long time, can be considered for layout 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. In the past few days, 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, 100% pre-mined, and part of it is Airdropped to Prometheans NFT holders. The price of Prometheans is also rising.

Rune No. 3 is DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, which 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 the current rune leader. The founder is extremely active on Twitter and has been promoting DOG.

Rune 4 THE•RUNIX•TOKEN, a project of RuneChain under L2 project BVM, 100% pre-mined, its NFT Runer holders can mine kuang to obtain runes.

Rune 5 DOG•DOG•DOG•DOG•DOG, anonymous team, 100% pre-mined, no details at present.

Rune 6 SATOSHI•NAKAMOTO ( Nakamoto Satoshi ) , 20% pre-mined, relatively high popularity, currently listed on some small exchanges, the only complaint is that the project party pre-mined too much.

Rune 7 MEME•ECONOMICS, anonymous team, pre-mined 20%, the chips are too concentrated.

Rune No. 8 RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE , belongs to RSIC, 100% pre-mined, has been Airdropped to previous RSIC mining users according to the proportion of points, the project party has chips in hand, and it was launched on 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 part for project operation.

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 own project holders.

• Meme theme

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

ANARCHO•CATBUS:Casey concept, Casey mentioned the related concept many times on Twitter, and the relevant tags have been added in the Twitter introduction, that is, Casey has never teased the related rune. ("Tease 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 attention to the rune, and the rune was rolled up in less than a few hours. 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 of the ones Casey mentioned. Leo, the founder of Runestone, has also nursed several of them, such as ORDINALS•ARE•DEAD, CASEYS•MOM•HAS•GOT•IT•GOING•ON, etc. If you are interested, you can go and look them up yourself. However, since there are too many nurse runes for these people, most of them performed mediocrely in the end. Here is just a direction for everyone to find runes.

• Community-led

BITCOIN•PEPE•MATRIX: PEPE concept, the rune uses the magical pepe emoticon package and the 69 420 concept mentioned by Musk before, which attracted the attention of many people. The artist who shouted the order once drew the Rare Pepes series.

There are almost no community-led ones at present, so I will only list one here.

05 Summary

The above is the introduction of runes. It can be seen that the development of runes is very rough at present. 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 market, the Bitcoin ecosystem is still worthy of attention.

Perhaps 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.