After the much-anticipated halving of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Runes protocol reached a major milestone that is getting a lot of attention from both onlookers and participants who are trying to figure out what this new standard means.
A Dune Analytics dashboard shows that the Runes system, which works on Bitcoin’s blockchain, has earned a huge $135 million in transaction fees. Tokens released under this protocol have gone up in value by over 2,100 BTC in just one week, showing a rise in activity on the blockchain.
Bitcoin Runes DeFi Transformation
BTC Runes was created by Casey Rodarmor, who also created the Ordinals protocol. Its goal is to improve the BRC-20 standard and encourage decentralized finance (DeFi) apps on Bitcoin’s network.
Runes uses Bitcoin’s UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) format to make transfers and the creation of better tokens on BTC faster and easier. The protocol was released at the same time as the halving event and has quickly become the center of all BTC action on the chain.
Bitcoin Wallet Unisat says that users have already created nearly 11,000 Runes tokens. This has led to a lot of activity on the blockchain, which temporarily raised BTC gas fees after the split. Fees have gone down again in the days after BTC quadrennial code change, which cut block mining payouts in half.
When Bitcoin Runes were added at block height 840,000, transaction costs went up at first, but experts think this effect will only last for a short time. A BTC expert named Jade Ardinals told crypto.news that the main reason for the higher network load was the creation of new tokens, also known as “minting,” which was driven by people’s excitement about Runes. People called this increase “artificial,” and it put more stress on BTC block space.
Analysts think that the pressure will eventually ease as the excitement dies down, confirming that the Runes standard has the ability to bring more developers to BTC. Runes coins have already taken over a big chunk of BTC’s on-chain activity.
“Speaking broadly, the adoption of Runes has a generally positive long-term impact on the network, and the hype around their minting through airdrops will fade as the most sought-after tokens launched during the halving are minted out.” Jade ARdinals on Runes
On April 25, Crypto Koryo’s Dune dashboard showed that they were responsible for 45% of all BTC transactions.
