According to The Block, in addition to the discussion about the Bitcoin halving itself, the Bitcoin community is also anticipating the launch of the Runes Protocol (expected to go live at the same time as the Bitcoin halving). Recent market speculation on BRC-20 has also driven up transaction fees on the Bitcoin chain.
The Runes Protocol is a new token protocol proposed by software engineer Casey Rodarmor. Prior to this, Rodarmor created the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol in January 2023. The main concept behind Ordinals is to bring non-fungibility to Bitcoin by distinguishing specific satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin) according to their minting order.
The BRC-20 token standard emerged shortly after the release of Ordinals, facilitating the issuance of new homogeneous tokens on the Bitcoin network.
Runes, to some extent, is similar to BRC-20, aiming to enable the trading of new tokens on the Bitcoin chain. However, unlike BRC-20, Runes will adopt the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model. Essentially, Runes aims to be a more efficient implementation of token issuance, considering network congestion factors. Given the success of BRC-20, many believe that Runes has the potential to be the next major breakthrough.
According to CryptoSlam data, PUPS, a meme coin based on BRC-20, has seen daily trading volumes reaching millions of dollars this month, making it the second-largest NFT/BRC-20 collectible in terms of trading volume in the past seven days. Each PUPS token based on the BRC-20 standard will have ownership of PUPS Runes. Once Runes is launched, these tokens can be swapped for PUPS Runes.
The speculation surrounding these Runes has naturally driven up Bitcoin transaction fees. The seven-day moving average of the network’s average transaction fee has risen from $4.11 at the beginning of the month to $12.17 currently. Although this value is still low compared to the peak during the ordinals speculation in December of last year, this leap is enough to make Bitcoin’s transaction fees surpass Ethereum’s.
Source: The Block
