Due to the new expectations brought by the founder of Ordinals, the "Runes" launched on the day of Bitcoin halving has soared in the short term. It can be said that the Bitcoin chain was extremely busy that day, and the Bitcoin handling fee skyrocketed. 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.
Author | Day
Production|Vernacular Blockchain
Due to the new expectations brought by the founder of Ordinals, the "Runes" launched on the day of Bitcoin halving has soared in the short term. It can be said that the Bitcoin chain was very busy that day, and Bitcoin handling fees soared. Transactions of hundreds or thousands of dollars were everywhere, which not only caused congestion in 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, and 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 Rune?
Rune is a new Bitcoin Token protocol proposed by Casey, the founder of the Ordinals protocol. Its goal is to solve problems related to BRC-20Token, especially the congestion of the Bitcoin network 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 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 situation where BRC-20 Token takes 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 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.
Some others think that the current rune names are too long and are not meme-worthy 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 concentrated in 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. I usually use Unisat and MagicEden for comparison, and use OKX for new listings.
Looking at the Gas on the Bitcoin chain, it can be seen that the overall popularity of runes is not high at present. Recently, there have been some FUD (abbreviation of fear, uncertainty, doubt) voices. Most KOLs complained about the new system of Rune Protocol, which requires high gas to cast and then roll the floor after casting. Moreover, the handling fee blocked most buyers who wanted to buy (when gas is high, the purchase may be cut in half), resulting in only selling but no buying, and finally rolling the floor on top of the roll, which will only make Kuang workers cheaper.
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 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 some 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 more pitfalls.
All kinds of new things come out in a myriad of ways, and often comprehensive judgments are needed.
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 plummet after the snapshot ends;
Well-known projects on ETH or other chains, such as Prometheans.
2) KOL shouting, artists
Like Casey, LEO and other influential KOL shouting, here you need to know something about KOL, some people shout a new one every few days, this is unbearable.
3) Specific special meanings
Like the rune 0 UNCOMMON•GOODS, it takes four years to complete, similar to the Sats of BRC-20, the time period is long, 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 sats in BRC-20, large total volume, long time, can be considered for layout in the bear market.
Rune 1 is Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•FEHU•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z, with a total volume of 100 million, 99.99% pre-mining, a few days ago, retail investors bet that the project party would destroy the pre-mining, but then the project party tweeted that it would Airdrop the pre-mining 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 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. It is currently the leader of runes. The founder is extremely active on Twitter and has been promoting DOG.
Rune No. 4 is THE•RUNIX•TOKEN, a project of RuneChain under the L2 project BVM, 100% pre-mined, and 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 8 RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE, belongs to RSIC, 100% pre-mined, has been Airdropped to previous RSIC mining users according to the points ratio, the project party has chips in hand, and 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 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 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 were always added in the Twitter introduction, that is, Casey never milked the related runes. ("Nurturing 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 originated from Casey's tweet that he would commit suicide if the market value of Rune Ecosystem did not reach $1 billion in the first month after its launch.
Here are the main ones Casey mentioned. Leo, the founder of Rune, 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 read them yourself. However, since there are too many of these nursed runes, 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 projects, so here is just one.
05. Summary
The above is the introduction to runes. It can be seen that the development of runes is very rough at present. From the recent on-chain fees of Bitcoin, it can also be seen 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.