Almost a week has passed since the Bitcoin halving event, and Bitcoin Runes have hit a significant milestone as both observers and participants discuss the implications of this new development.
According to data from a Dune Analytics dashboard, the Runes protocol on Bitcoin (BTC) has collected a whopping $135 million in transaction fees on the largest blockchain in the world of cryptocurrency. On-chain information reveals that tokens issued under this standard have generated over 2,100 BTC in costs within just one week.
Casey Rodarmor, the mastermind behind the Ordinals protocol, is also the brain behind Bitcoin Runes. This new protocol aims to enhance the BRC-20 standard and is seen as a way to kickstart decentralized finance (defi) on the BTC network.
With Runes, users can conduct more efficient transactions and create better-optimized tokens on BTC by utilizing BTC’s UTXO format. The concept was introduced during the halving and has since become a significant source of on-chain BTC activity.
Since the launch of Bitcoin Runes, users have minted nearly 11,000 Runes, leading to a surge in BTC gas fees shortly after the halving. However, fees have decreased in the days following the quadrennial code change that reduced block mining rewards by 50%.
Although Bitcoin Runes initially caused a spike in BTC transaction costs when they were introduced at block height 840,000, analysts do not believe this effect will be long-lasting. Jade ARdinals, a Bitcoin researcher, explained that the increased network load was primarily due to token creation, or minting, and expects this pressure to ease over time. Despite this, analysts believe that the Runes standard will continue to attract more developers to Bitcoin.
Runes have already made a significant impact on BTC’s on-chain activity, with data from Crypto Koryo’s Dune dashboard showing that Runes tokens made up 45% of all Bitcoin transactions on April 25.
In other news, CryptoQuant reports that miners are maintaining their pace from before the halving event despite the recent upgrade.