Casey Rodarmor, the same mind behind the Ordinals protocol, developed Bitcoin Runes to improve the BRC-20 standard, which is supposed to seed Defi on the BTC network.
Runes allow users to execute more efficient transactions and create better-optimized tokens on BTC by leveraging BTC’s UTXO format. The concept was launched during the halving and has since become a source of on-chain BTC activity.
According to Bitcoin Wallet Unisat, users created nearly 11,000 runes, a wave of blockchain participation that sent BTC gas fees skyrocketing shortly after the halving. However, fees retreated in the days following Bitcoin’s quadrennial code change, which reduced block mining rewards by 50%.
Analysts: Bitcoin Runes Could Benefit the Network in the Long Term
Shipping at a block height of 840,000, Bitcoin Runes initially caused a overvoltage in BTC transaction costs, but analysts do not expect this effect to persist in the long term. Bitcoin researcher Jade ARdinals shared with crypto.news that the additional load on the BTC network was only caused by the token creation aspect, also known as minting.
The researcher explained that speculation around runes triggered a massive strike, adding an “artificial” burden to the BTC block space. Analysts believe this pressure will ease, but maintain that the Runes standard will attract more developers to Bitcoin.
“Generally speaking, the adoption of Runes has a generally positive long-term impact on the network, and the hype around their minting via airdrops will fade as the most sought-after tokens launched during the halving will be removed.”
