Runes Dominate Over Two-Thirds of Bitcoin Transactions Since Launch

Since its introduction following Bitcoin’s halving event on April 20, Runes, a novel token standard on the Bitcoin blockchain, has accounted for more than 68% of all transactions on the network.

According to data from a Dune Analytics dashboard shared by Crypto Koryo, over 2.38 million Runes transactions have been processed, representing a significant portion of Bitcoin’s overall transaction volume. These transactions encompass a variety of activities, including ordinary peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions, BRC-20s, Ordinals, and, notably, Runes.

On April 23, Runes experienced its peak activity, with over 750,000 transactions recorded. However, this figure dropped by more than half the following day, reaching 312,000 transactions.

Initially, the surge in Runes transactions was propelled by the enthusiasm of memecoin and nonfungible token enthusiasts seeking to mint “rare satoshis” using the Runes protocol. As a result, on the halving day, Runes transactions contributed to nearly 70% of total miner fees, marking a significant revenue source for miners.

Despite this initial success, there are debates within the industry regarding the long-term sustainability of Runes as a revenue stream for Bitcoin miners. Already, there is a notable discrepancy between the volume of Rune transactions and the miner fees earned from them.

Created by Casey Rodarmor, the inventor of Ordinals, Runes offers a promising alternative for token creation on the Bitcoin network compared to the BRC-20 token standard. Positioned as a more efficient protocol, Runes has garnered attention for its potential to streamline token creation processes on the Bitcoin blockchain.