There has been a steep drop in new Runes engraved into Bitcoin Rune Etchings daily, with the quantity dropping below 250 for the last six days. Among the striking drops is the 99% decline from the high seen in late April—just 157 Runes were engraved on Monday alone, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard made by RUNES.IS.
We’re back to square one after a week of record-breaking success (an average of 14,700 new Runes written every day from April 26 to April 26). A significant highlight of this incredible run was the record-breaking 23,061 Runes written on April 26.
Rune Etchings Decline After Halving Peak
After the fourth Bitcoin halving block on April 20, a new token standard, Runes, became. Fans of meme coins and other non-fungible tokens can use this protocol to permanently imprint the Bitcoin network with their beloved works of art, photographs, music, and videos. As a first benefit, it let Bitcoin miners recoup some losses sustained during the recent halving. At its current price of $3.125 BTC, the block subsidy is worth $196,800.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the number of Rune etchings is declining; on May 13, miMay 13eceived only $3,835 in transaction fees from 157 Runes. Relative to the hundreds of thousands of euros every day at the end of April, this is a significant drop. With an average daily payout of around $189,000, Bitcoin Rune Etchings miners have received $4.5 million in transaction fees since its introduction on April 20. By April 20, Bitcoin will have more than 91,200 Runes written. Even though Rune etchings have decreased, most May transactions still involve Runes.
Typical venues for these deals include UniSat, Ordinals Wallet, OKX, Magic Eden, and OKX. Binance Research states that Runes—introduced by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor—strives to make better use of block space than its primary rival, BRC-20s. Undespent transaction output (UTXO) wallets allow Runes and other arbitrary fungible tokens like them to be kept, unlike BRC-20s.
Developers Hit Back at Runes
A month ago, Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr disapproved of the Runes protocol, claiming. It takes advantage of a severe vulnerability in Bitcoin’s blockchain architecture—ordinal Inscriptions and the Runes Protocol Interact With. The network is in very different ways, as Dashjr pointed out in his post, unlike Ordinals, which take advantage of security holes. Bitcoin Rune Etchings Core, he said the Runes protocol fixes the network’s existing problems.
Dashjr proposed ways to filter out Runes-related transactions in response to his criticism of the protocol. For the bitcoin.conf file, he suggested lowering the “datacarriersize” parameter to zero, which would turn off Runes’ spam. Nevertheless, preliminary findings indicate that the miners are disregarding this recommendation. On April 20, 20ppened to be the same day as the fourth Bitcoin halving. The transaction fees for Bitcoin Rune Etchings hit a record high of $128 due to the Runes protocol’s popularity.