Post-halving, Bitcoin Runes amass $135m in fees
Bitcoin Runes, a protocol on the Bitcoin (BTC) network, has reached a significant milestone in the week following the halving. According to data from Dune Analytics, the Runes protocol has generated $135 million in transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain. Tokens issued under the Runes standard have resulted in over 2,100 BTC costs within a week.
Bitcoin Runes was developed by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of the Ordinals protocol. Its purpose is to enhance the BRC-20 standard and facilitate decentralized finance (defi) on the Bitcoin network. By leveraging BTC’s UTXO format, Runes enables users to perform more efficient transactions and create optimized tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since its launch during the halving, Runes has become a significant source of on-chain BTC activity.
According to Bitcoin wallet Unisat, nearly 11,000 Runes have been minted by users, leading to a surge in BTC gas fees shortly after the halving. However, these fees have decreased in the days following the halving, which reduced block mining rewards by 50%.
The introduction of Bitcoin Runes at block height 840,000 initially caused a spike in BTC transaction costs. However, analysts believe that this effect will not persist in the long term. Bitcoin researcher Jade Ardinals explained that the increased load on BTC’s network was primarily due to token creation or minting. Speculation surrounding Runes triggered mass minting, artificially burdening BTC’s block space. Analysts anticipate that this pressure will diminish over time but maintain that the Runes standard will attract more developers to Bitcoin.
Runes tokens have already captured a significant portion of BTC’s on-chain activity. According to Crypto Koryo’s Dune dashboard, Runes tokens accounted for 45% of all Bitcoin transactions on April 25.
Despite the upgrade, CryptoQuant reports that miners are maintaining their pre-halving pace.
