bitcoin It’s front and center once again, and there’s plenty to be excited about for orange coin lovers everywhere: New Highest price ever, upcoming halvingincrease in demand ordinal number—And coming soon is a brand new feature called Runes.
And while Loon will fall short of Bitcoin until the halving, the project is already receiving a lot of hype and attention as miner rewards are cut, cutting the supply of newly minted BTC in half once again. Here’s what you need to know:
What are runes?
Runes is a new protocol from Casey Rodarmor, the man behind Ordinals. Using Ordinals, Bitcoin developers have been able to create: NFT-It’s like an “inscription” on the Bitcoin network. And this ultimately made it possible to exchange JPEGs for the magic internet currency right on the grandfather chain.
In an interview with Rodarmor Tech Crunchdescribed his Ordinals “theory” as “a lens through which to view the Bitcoin blockchain, and when viewed through that lens, traceable Satoshis stand out like Pokémon in the tall grass.” So in this sense, the runes similarly represent a new lens through which to view Bitcoin. But this time we use poop coins.
The Runes protocol picks up where BRC-20 left off. BRC-20 is Fungible Token StandardIt uses its own Ordinals protocol and was developed by pseudonymous developers. Domo. Runes are an attempt to make the process of creating fungible tokens in Bitcoin more efficient.
How do runes work?
Ordinals and inscriptions are non-fungible tokens (unique identifiers for storing data such as collectibles, artwork, and trading cards), while BRC-20s and runes are fungible tokens. Fungible simply means that all money is digital and therefore interchangeable, like dollar bills you no longer have in your wallet.
Like BRC-20, Runes uses Bitcoin and pays fees in Bitcoin to create new tokens. The key difference between Runes and BRC-20 is that Runes, like Bitcoin itself, uses the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model rather than the account model (the same model used by some layer 1 chains, such as Ethereum).
Many Bitcoiners believe that the UTXO model is superior and that using an account model is one of the reasons to use the UTXO model. Ethereum lack. Rodarmor himself believes that the UTXO model is superior because while other token standards tend to rely on off-chain data, Runes is completely on-chain.
With runes, the issuer creates a token and sets a limit on how many someone can mint in a transaction. In this way, both the token creator and the buyer community have the same opportunity to access and purchase the tokens at the same time.
When will the Runes protocol be released on Bitcoin?
Rodarmor timed the release of Rune to coincide with the Bitcoin halving. This means that once Bitcoin reaches block height 840,000, both the Rune Protocol and the various “Rune” tokens built into the protocol will become active. This is expected to happen now or in . Around April 20thbut estimate will be different.
“Halving” refers to an event hard-coded into the Bitcoin protocol and occurs approximately every four years. This is intended to curb Bitcoin’s inflation rate and historically this event has been viewed as a bullish indicator and often brings a lot of attention to Bitcoin. In the end, “number increase” is when supply decreases and demand increases.
Although Rune and its halving are still over 30 days away, several projects are already building around Rune as expected.
What projects are you building on Runes?
Since Rodarmor first announced his plans for the Rune Protocol. again in septemberThere was a flurry of activity on site at the Ordinals in preparation.
The first and most notable project that started making noise was RSIC. RSIC is a collection of 21,000 Ordinals with plans to launch a token called RUNE. This is similar to launching an ERC-20 token called ERC-20 and is sure to cause some confusion. The RSIC ordinal numbers are: Airdropped to your wallet specific to its possession different Ordinal inscriptions such as Ordinal Maxi Beads.
RSIC is a variation of the term ASIC, which is a type of Bitcoin miner. Users who own the RSIC Ordinals inscription can use it to “mine” the upcoming tokens.
Other notable projects have since followed in RSIC’s footsteps.
Runestone is an Ordinals project created by pseudonym NFT and Ordinals connoisseur Leonidas. The project consists of 112,383 Runestone Ordinals, which were airdropped to all Ordinal wallets that held at least 3 inscriptions prior to launch. Deadline: January 20, 2024—This is the 1st anniversary of the launch of the Ordinals protocol.
that Airdrop started from ThursdayAnd Leonidas said before. decryption each of them Runestones are “transformed” into rune tokens. Once the protocol is activated.
node ape Another rune migration project that combines a NodeMonkes-inspired profile picture (PFP) with the “Runic Miner” Ordinal (sold separately, some assembly required). Node Ape and rune miner Ordinal promise to “mine” runes if you keep them together in the same wallet.
RuneX It is a project that claims to build a decentralized exchange for Runes on Bitcoin and also has its own collection of Ordinals.
last popular Bitcoin Wallet Xverse On Thursday, it added testnet support for Runes and announced plans to support the fungible token standard as soon as mainnet launches.
There are a ton of projects in the Ordinals space right now that use Runes to do a variety of things, but there’s one important thing to remember: There is Runes, which is the protocol, and then there are “runes”, which are tokens built on top of the protocol that anyone can use. You can make it with know-how.
Crucially, Rodarmor has yet to reveal any information about the technical framework associated with Runes. So any project that claims to be the “first” to release Rune tokens is currently making some pretty big assumptions. Saying you’re releasing a rune-based token now is a bit like saying you’re going to remix a song that hasn’t been released yet.
Currently, projects claiming to be mining runes are essentially We are operating a ‘points program’.—But in Bitcoin. Once you have Ordinal in your wallet, you can start mining points, or runes.
What good are runes?
Rodarmor is very honest about why he released Runes. In a recent conversation on his “Hell Money Podcast” youtubeThe developers have made their intentions very clear. “If Loon is successful, it will take liquidity, technology and attention away from other cryptocurrencies and bring it back to Bitcoin,” he said.
“Once you realize that this is a gambling and entertainment industry, it all makes sense and everyone can approach it in a more honest way,” he added.
As far as its creators are concerned, runes mean nothing more than the creation of speculative assets, plain and simple. There’s no grand talk about getting teams through the runway or funding developers for projects that build the “future of finance.” A fair token launch that allows people to enter into speculative assets while minimizing speculative risk.
Of course, what other developers do with the Runes protocol is out of Rodarmor’s hands once it’s running.
“I don’t make shitcoins,” Rodarmor said in an interview. “I’m creating a place where people can create worse and more dangerous shitcoins. “We’ll see.”
Edited by Guillermo Jimenez and Andrew Hayward
