Following Bitcoin’s halving event on April 20, Runes, a new token standard on the Bitcoin blockchain, has become increasingly popular, accounting for more than two-thirds of all transactions on the network.
Data from Dune Analytics dashboard, shared by blockchain research firm Crypto Koryo, indicates that over 2.38 million Runes transactions have been processed, constituting 68% of all Bitcoin transactions since April 20. This increase includes transactions involving ordinary peer-to-peer Bitcoin, BRC-20s, Ordinals, and Runes.
April 23 marked a peak for the token standard; over 750,000 transactions were carried out with Runes. However, there was a significant decrease the following day, with transactions dropping to 312,000.
The surge in demand for Runes began at block 840,000, primarily driven by memecoin and nonfungible token enthusiasts competing to inscribe and etch “rare satoshis” using the Runes protocol.
As a result of this demand, Runes transactions contributed to nearly 70% of miner fees on the halving day, with daily figures fluctuating between 33% and 69% since then.
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Despite its popularity, experts are divided on whether Runes will provide a sustainable revenue stream for Bitcoin miners. There is also a notable difference between the number of Rune transactions and the miner fees earned from Runes.
Runes, developed by Ordinals inventor Casey Rodarmor, has been marketed as a more efficient way to create new tokens on the Bitcoin network compared to the BRC-20 token standard, an Ordinals-based method for creating Bitcoin-based tokens.
However, some folks are dissatisfied with the volume of block space that Runes transactions have occupied lately.
Among the critics unhappy is Nikita Zhavoronkov, a lead developer at blockchain search engine Blockchair, who argues that Bitcoin has deviated from its original peer-to-peer electronic cash system vision as envisioned by its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
In his words, “This is a typical Bitcoin block since the halving: Runes are orange, ordinary transfers are the rest 😳 Bitcoin has completely ceased to be an “Electronic Cash System”: it barely processes 0.5 monetary transactions per second, and people pay $100+ for that 💸”
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