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Author: Arijit Sarkar, CoinTelegraph; Compiled by: Tao Zhu, Bitchain Vision
The Bitcoin Rune Protocol is working to maintain its share of Bitcoin transactions.Since its launch on April 20, rune trading has dominated Bitcoin blockchain traffic on eight different days, most of which are on weekends.
The release of Bitcoin runes coincides with the fourth halving of Bitcoin.The resulting hype has led to a surge in transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain.Bitcoin mining revenue exceeded the $100 million mark for the first time, with daily revenue reaching a record high of $107.7 million.
Users spent $2.4 million on the first halving block to engrave runes and Rare Satoshi.Source: Mempool.space
As of April 24, transactions on the Runes protocol accounted for more than 50% of all Bitcoin transactions.The peak occurred on April 23, when these transactions accounted for 81.3% of the network.However, by May 2, that figure had dropped to 11.1%.
Share of Bitcoin transactions by protocol type.Source: Dune Analytics
As shown in the Dune chart above, the rune hype heats up again on the weekends of May 4, 5 and 6.However, it has been on a downward trend since then.
As of May 22, runes accounted for 12.7% of Bitcoin transactions, much higher than Bitcoin Ordinals (0.7%) and BRC-20 (1.5%).The rest is occupied by BTC.As a result, rune trading volume has dropped by more than 84% since its all-time high.
Runes are part of a broader developer campaign, called Bitcoin Decentralized Finance (DeFi) or BTCFi, designed to add more practicality to the Bitcoin network.Adding the newly launched protocol to Ordinals and BRC-20, the Bitcoin network hit an all-time high of 926,000 transactions per day.
Total Bitcoin transactions, historical chart.Source: Glassnode
However,The real market opportunity about the rune protocol may only emerge after the first wave of investor hype fades a few months ago.
Nazar Khan, co-founder and CEO of TeraWulf, said in an interview:“Runes and ordinal numbers are showing the value of the block space… The Bitcoin network is the most decentralized, secure, and powerful network available, and therefore will be the use cases and value derived from that block space.”
