Runes protocol sees significant decline in activity

As an experienced analyst, I’ve been closely monitoring the cryptocurrency market and have taken notice of the recent decline in activity for the Runes protocol. While it initially gained significant traction following its launch on April 19, with transactions making up the majority of Bitcoin network activity, there has been a notable decrease since May 10th.


Since its debut week of trading, the level of engagement with the Runes protocol has noticeably dropped. A marked decrease occurred on May 10th, during which time very little new activity was recorded – including new coin mints and wallet interactions – compared to earlier stages.

Based on data from Dune analytics, assembled by Runes Is, the fee income for the Dune protocol has been gradually decreasing. Despite generating over half a million dollars in fees each day on the Bitcoin network, the overall earnings have barely exceeded the $1 million mark in the last twelve days. This trend suggests a notable decrease in revenue.

Casey Rodarmor, the innovator behind Bitcoin’s Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform Ordinals, has introduced a novel method for generating fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain through Runes.

As a crypto investor, I’ve been closely monitoring the market for the past few weeks, and one protocol that has caught my attention is Runes. This newcomer went live on April 19, just as Bitcoin underwent its latest halving event. The launch of Runes caused quite a stir among investors, resulting in skyrocketing transaction fees and an unprecedented windfall for Bitcoin miners. In fact, during the first week alone, miners raked in an impressive $135 million in fees.

According to Dune Analytics’ data up until April 24, transactions involving Runes accounted for the largest proportion of Bitcoin network transactions, reaching a peak of 81.3% on April 23. In comparison, Bitcoin (BTC) transactions represented only 18.15%, while Ordinals and BRC-20 transactions each had a minimal impact at 0.1%.

The number of Runes transactions decreased steadily from May 1 to May 2. However, starting on May 3, there was a significant increase in Runes transactions, causing it to surpass a 60% transaction share on May 4 and 5.

Mining communities were actually pleased with the increasing fees despite a substantial decrease in their earnings post-Bitcoin halving. Nevertheless, the daily income for Bitcoin miners fell below the $30 million mark in May.

Runes function similarly to Ordinals, enabling the creation of new token standards on Bitcoin’s blockchain. They provide a more streamlined approach to tokenization compared to BRC20. Consequently, there has been a significant increase in memecoin trading on Bitcoin, which recently reached a milestone of processing one billion transactions.

Runes has experienced notable achievements despite being on various platforms, as some Rune collections have amassed market capitalizations worth hundreds of millions of dollars, based on information from Magic Eden.

During a recent Ordinals event in Hong Kong, Casey Rodarmor intriguingly previewed a groundbreaking audioreactive generative art project. This revelation underscores the vast potential of the platform.

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2024-05-12 13:07