Bitcoin user wastes $100,000 due to faulty rune mint

According to Bitcoin ordinal and rune explorer Ord.io, approximately $100,000 in Bitcoin was vaporized in an invalid Rune Protocol mint. On Wednesday, the professional tracker tweeted that 1.365 BTC (equivalent to approximately $97,662) was lost by a user attempting to mint Rune 777, also known as LEEROY JENKINS.

Runes is the Bitcoin network’s fungible token protocol that allows users to “etch” and mint tokens on the world’s largest blockchain.

“The way rune minting works is that there is a mint window where every rune mint transaction is valid,” said co-founder of the pseudonym Ord. leonidas explain decryption—For example, block 840,000 to block 841,000. “With every rune mint coming to an end, people are rushing to mine mint deals before the window closes.”

In the example above, Leonidas explained that if the mint transaction had been mined in block 841,001, the collector would have paid the network fee for nothing.

“If the transaction doesn’t take place, you lose your BTC and you don’t receive any runes,” Leonidas said. “This is how the protocol works.” He added that towards the end of a popular mint, demand for mints would outstrip the supply of space for blockchain blocks.

According to the Ord website, the maximum supply of LEEROY JENKINS is 69.4 million and there are currently 1,350 holders. Of the 57,850 mints completed, 276 have been classified as invalid, leaving the disappointed mints with no recourse.

“Bitcoin does not recognize the Runes protocol and does not have the ability to use its logic in a way that allows smart contracts to refund invalid mints,” he said. “In the Bitcoin network, Rune Mint is just meaningless data.”

The name LEEROY JENKINS comes from the iconic World of Warcraft character of the same name. Created by Ben Schulz, the infamous player ignored his plan of attack and rushed into battle recklessly, resulting in the loss of his dungeon party’s treasure. Jenkins has since become an internet meme.

Leonidas said that although rune mining sites can help users avoid losses, there will always be losers.

“Minting platforms can only encourage and educate on how minting of the Rune Protocol works. But ultimately it’s still zero sum and someone is going to lose,” he said. “If one issuance platform is very good at educating users on how to set the commission rate higher at the end of an issuance, that issuer is taking someone else’s place who will still have an invalid issuance.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.