Three weeks after its blockbuster launch, Runes faces declining activity
The Runes protocol, which launched on Bitcoin three weeks ago following its halving event, generated $135 million in fees over its first week, but activity has since fallen dramatically. May 10th was the lowest activity day on Runes by several measures, including new mints and new wallets, blockchain data show, in an early test for the new protocol.
However, activity since the first week of trading has generally slowed, according to a Dune analytics dashboard compiled by Runes Is. May 10th saw some of the lowest levels activity yet on the Runes protocol, with the fewest number of new mints and fewest new wallets interacting with the protocol since its launch.
Data from The Block also shows a steady decrease in fees generated by the protocol; while Runes still generate hundreds of thousands of dollars per day in fees on the Bitcoin blockchain, the sum of fees has broached $1 million only twice in the past twelve days.
Of course, many platforms struggle with early adoption, and Runes is far from obscurity; several Rune collections have market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Magic Eden data . Runes developer Casey Rodarmor, who also created Bitcoin Ordinals, also recently teased an audioreactive generative art project at an Ordinals event in Hong Kong.
With Runes, like with Ordinals, different token standards are possible on top of the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time. Runes leverages Bitcoin’s UTXO model and the OP_RETURN opcode to offer a more efficient Bitcoin tokenization solution than the BRC20 standard, leading to mostly memecoin trading activity on Bitcoin, which recently processed its one billionth transaction .
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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