the NFT protocol records 15.6 million transactions

Bitcoin runes, the NFT protocol launched last April, has recorded 15.6 million transactions to date. The total fees generated are also staggering, amounting to 162.5 million dollars. 

Bitcoin Runes: the NFT protocol with 15.6 million transactions in just 4 months

The successor of the Ordinals, Bitcoin Runes, since its launch 4 months ago has recorded a total of 15.6 million NFT transactions. 

To confirm it is Dune Analytics, which also highlights another significant figure: in the same period, the fees generated on transactions were 162.5 million dollars. 

Specifically, Bitcoin Runes has made sparks in the first two months since its launch, surpassing even 300,000 transactions per day. 

Already on the day of its launch, which took place on April 20 in conjunction with the fourth halving of Bitcoin, the NFT protocol had recorded 57.7% of the total transactions on the BTC network. This amounts to a total of 80 million dollars in fees.

On April 23, then, among mint, edicts, and etchings, Bitcoin Runes NFT investors accumulated more than one million transactions. This figure represents 81.3% of the total bandwidth of the Bitcoin network. 

On the contrary, these last two months have started to see an initial decline, with an average of about 50,000 daily transactions.

Bitcoin Runes: the NFT protocol and the current transactions in decline

Apparently, the initial enthusiasm for NFTs on Bitcoin of Runes has started to wane, along with its transactions. 

And indeed, in another analysis from July 2024, it had already emerged that the average daily transactions of Runes from June 22 to 28 were just 37,820.

This is a drop of over 90% compared to the daily average of 330,000 recorded between June 9 and 15, just two weeks earlier. 

June 24th was the worst day for Bitcoin Runes NFT, with just 23,238 transactions executed. 

In any case, even the Ordinals protocol for the creation of NFT and BRC-20 tokens had recorded a similar decline in the past. 

To give a practical example, in January 2024, BRC-20 had reached up to 75% of the share of all transactions on Bitcoin. By July, such transactions do not even reach 0.5%, mainly due to the replacement of Runes. 

The differences of the three protocols

Both Runes and Ordinals and the BRC-20 standard, have in common that they are three protocols that allow the creation of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, without obviously using smart contracts. 

In fact, starting with Ordinals, it was possible to inscribe the metadata on individual satoshis, thus obtaining digital artifacts, distinguishable from one another and with their own characteristics.

Immediately after, the BRC-20 arrived, which since May have introduced NFTs on Bitcoin for the first time. And so the memecoin on BRC-20 standard arrived, which have pushed on-chain activity to all-time highs. Some of the BRC-20 tokens have also been listed on popular crypto-exchanges, such as ORDI.

The creator of Ordinals Bitcoin, Casey Rodarmor, had however criticized the BRC-20 tokens, pointing out the undesirable proliferation of UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) on Bitcoin wallets. 

And so, here is the proposal of the Bitcoin Runes protocol, which uses a different approach from the previous two to create its NFTs. In fact, Runes is based precisely on UTXO, but without unnecessarily using the block space and clogging the chain with unnecessary transactions. 

Specifically, users send a call to the “Rune” on various inputs, which are then transferred and burned through the “OP_RETURN” function. In this way, the unspent balances (change) are identified as fungible tokens.