Bitcoin Runes Protocol

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20 Apr 2024

What is the Runes protocol that will come with Bitcoin halving?

Along with the eagerly awaited halving in Bitcoin, the Runes protocol will also be launched on April 20. The protocol, announced by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals, in September, is described as "one step beyond Ordinals". Expectations are that this protocol will generate large transaction fee returns, attract developer interest, and significantly increase Bitcoin's user base.

The Runes protocol, which Casey Rodarmor, the creator of the Ordinals protocol, which attracted crazy interest in Bitcoin last year, announced in September and detailed in his blog post, will be officially launched with the halving.

The Runes protocol, which Rodarmor decided to launch with the reward halving, simply aims to facilitate the creation of “fungible” tokens on the Bitcoin network.

As it is known, Ordinals, also created by Rodarmor, enabled the creation of NFT-like, that is, “unchangeable” tokens, also known as “inscriptions” in the Bitcoin network. Thus, many jpeg-style assets could be bought and sold on the Bitcoin network.

“From tokens that look like Pokemon to meme coins…”

In an interview with TechCrunch, Rodarmor said about Ordinals, "It is a lens that sees inside the Bitcoin blockchain... Thanks to this lens, pokemon-looking satoshis appearing in the tall grass appear." For the Runes protocol, the developer said, “This is a lens that sees the inside of the blockchain in a different way, but this time with meme coins.”

Like BRC-20s but…

Runes is also described as a "rival of the BRC-20 standard". As it is known, unlike Ordinals or “inscriptions”, BRC-20s are fungible tokens… Here, Runes aims to create these BRC-20 style fungible tokens in an easier, different and cheaper way on the Bitcoin network.

To create new tokens in the Runes protocol, Bitcoin will be used for transaction fees, just like BRC-20s. The main difference between the two protocols is that, like Bitcoin itself, the Rune protocol will use “Unspent Transaction Output”, also known as UTXO.

What Are Bitcoin Runes? A New Fungible Token Protocol on Bitcoin

UTXO can be defined as the small number of tokens remaining after a Bitcoin transaction.

Rodarmor states that the UTXO model will be much more effective because in other token standards there are many situations that depend on off-chain data, but in Runes everything is on-chain.

In the Runes protocol, the person who will issue the token can determine how many tokens can be issued in a transaction. Before the token is made available to the general public, the creator has the right to reserve some tokens for himself in advance.

It will be launched with the halving

Rodarmor stated that he arranged the Runes protocol to be launched with the halving. In other words, some tokens on the protocol will come to life after the halving, which is expected to take place on April 20.

PUPS token increased by 2600% in one month

After the announcement of the Runes protocol, many projects dedicated to this field were already launched… However, all of them were inscriptions and in the BRC-20 standard… For example, the PUPS token in the BRC-20 category attracted great attention and its price increased by 2600% in the last month. This token will be shifted here after the launch of the Runes protocol and will work on this protocol.

NFT marketplace Magic Eden also announced that it will support the Runes mainnet update.

However, it is worth noting that there are many projects that state that they have released the "Runes token". Of course, it is not possible to issue these tokens before the Runes protocol starts...