Original author: 0x Sea.eth (X:@_0x Sea_）
Editors note: On December 16, 2023, Ordinals protocol founder Casey said at the Taipei Blockchain Week event that the Runes protocol mainnet will be launched at the Bitcoin block height of 840,000, probably in late April. . Its only two months since Runes was officially launched. What alpha opportunities are there? Crypto KOL0xSea.eth（X：@_0x Sea_) published an article to sort out the relevant information about Runes. Odaily organized it as follows:
If Ordinals and Atomicals, the two strongest protocols in BTC L1 at present, were born when no one cared about them, then Runes was launched under the attention of the entire industry. As the founder of the Ordinals protocol that opened the Pandoras Box of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Casey Rodarmor (@rodarmor) attracted the attention of the entire ecosystem after announcing the launch of the Runes protocol in September last year.
Now, with Runes only two months away from its official launch, what alpha opportunities are there?
1. Why are there Runes?
In the previous articleA brief history of the new BTC L1 protocol that even a 60-year-old grandma can understandIn the first chapter, we mentioned that Casey first created the Ordinals protocol for the purpose of uploading artwork/NFT to the chain, not for issuing coins. But then the emergence of BRC-20 broke this situation, and the transaction volume of BRC-20 has always dominated the entire Ordinals protocol. But as BRC-20 exploded in two waves last year, the industry accepted the existence of this inscription token, and Casey also changed his view: Although 99% of tokens are scams and gimmicks, they will not disappear just like casinos. Creating a good token protocol for Bitcoin may bring considerable transaction fee income to Bitcoin, attract more developers and users, and ultimately expand the usage of BTC. So on September 26, 2023, Casey fully released Runes idea for the first time through his blog, which is to build a new homogeneous token (token) protocol on Bitcoin. Article link:https://rodarmor.com/blog/runes/
In this article, he pointed out some problems with existing protocols such as BRC-20, RGB, and Taproot Assets, and proposed that a better BTC token protocol should be simple, not dependent on off-chain services, and based on UTXO. This This is the core idea and origin of Runes. The Chinese community generally calls it Rune Agreement. By the way, the unofficial symbol for Runes is ▣, while the symbol for Ordinals is ◉
2. When will Runes be launched?
Just five days before Casey published the article, on September 21, the atomic protocol @atomicalsxyz was also released. The first token $atom was minted for free in five hours in a proof-of-work (PoW) manner, giving Bitcoin L1 brings another innovation. Therefore, in the following months, the market also has great expectations for Runes, and many people are making various preparations to grab the first token on the Runes protocol.
However, in the past few months, the Casey team has to maintain the normal upgrade of Ordinals on the one hand, and deal with strange bugs such as cursed inscriptions (introduction article: https://twitter.com/_0x Sea_/status/1743512063593546052) Due to the unexpected situation brought about by the game, the launch time of Runes has not been determined. It was not until December 16 that Casey announced the launch time of the Runes protocol on the main network at the Taipei Blockchain Week event. It was released at the Bitcoin block height of 840,000, which is when BTC was halved for the fourth time. It will probably be in late April.
Now, there are less than 2 months until Runes is officially released. Hopefully Casey has finished the game Baldurs Gate 3 and wont delay the release of Runes again.
3. But there seem to be several protocols called Rune.
As mentioned above, Casey announced the idea of Runes on September 26, and has been updating the code for Runes on Github for several months. Although the Runes protocol has not been officially launched, many developers want to make things based on it.
There are two categories here, one is to make Runes-like protocols, and the other is to make specific projects. Lets talk about the protocol category first. There are two main projects: The first one is the @PipeBtc protocol issued by Benny. It is the first protocol based on the idea of Runes, and it moves very quickly. If you don’t know Benny, you can read the articleA brief history of the new BTC L1 protocol that even a 60-year-old grandma can understandIn the second chapter, Benny is a technical speculator who is energetic, has many ideas, and has issued multiple coins.
The second one was launched by @runealpha_btc in December, similar to Pipe. The first token on Runealpha is Cook, but it does not limit the total amount of tokens and the number of tokens. Instead, it limits the number of blocks to 150 (equivalent to a time limit). Mints within the block range will count. I saw Runealphas financing BP through other channels last week. The projects next positioning is to become the infrastructure of the Runes protocol, including browsers, indexes, trading platforms, etc. The $Cook token should also be migrated to the Runes protocol, but the specific rules have not yet been determined.
4. There are also some Runes concept projects
In addition to the protocol categories mentioned above, the second category is specific projects. These projects have all emerged in the past 1-2 months. The main logic is: before Runes is officially released at block 840, 000, use the strong market expectations to preview, do things in advance, and issue NFT on Ordinals first. To build community consensus, after the Runes protocol is officially deployed, project tokens will be issued on the Runes protocol and airdropped to NFT holders. Below I list some such projects that I am concerned about. Please forgive me if there are any omissions. You are welcome to add them in the reply area below.
1) RSIC
RSIC is the abbreviation of Rune Specific Inscription Circuits. This is an NFT on Ordinals with a total supply of 21,000 pieces, 10% of which is reserved by the project party. 90% of RSIC was airdropped to shareholders by the project team at their own expense, costing more than 3 BTC, and was praised by the community for its large scale. The specific airdrop rules and standards have not been announced, and it is speculated that it is mainly based on the blue-chip NFT held by the wallet. Because it is an airdrop, some wallets do not know that they have received the NFT, so they need to make a transfer (buy, sell/transfer to yourself) before it can be activated. After activation, mining begins. What is mined is the token share of a certain token that the project will deploy in Runes in the future. This also fully shows that the RSIC project team is the OG of the Ordinals ecosystem, otherwise it would be difficult to get rapid support from the Ordiscan browser. Due to space limitations, more details about RSIC will not be expanded here. Those who are interested can check out @lilyanna_btc’s previous article: https://twitter.com/lilyanna_btc/status/1749639096853745957
Official recommendation: @rune_coin
Official website: https://runecoin.io
More documentation: https://ordiscan.com/inscription/126 You can browse its multiple child inscriptions here to dig out more interesting details.
Magic Eden collection: https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rsic
Mining query: You can enter the wallet address at http://ordiscan.com and query in the Runes column
2) RSIC Boost
RSIC Boost is an additional tool launched by the RSIC project. This time it is not an airdrop, but you need to hold a wallet with RSIC to mint (it costs ~$170 or more). Putting it in the wallet can speed up the mining process of RSIC. This move further screened out the active wallets on the chain, increased the market game play, and once again proved that the project team is very good at causing trouble.
The current total amount is 3.9K, Magic Eden collection: https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rsic-boost
3) Rune Mania Miner
Sure enough, soon a project party sent an airdrop to RSIC Boost holders (equivalent to also holding RSIC). This project was Rune Mania Miner. The total amount is 3,800, 3,547 are airdropped to the community, and 253 are reserved by the team. Like RSIC, it also needs to be transferred once (you can also transfer it to yourself) before it can be activated and mined.
Official Twitter: @RuneManiaMiner
Official website/document:https://ord.io/61549984
Magic Eden collection: https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rmm
Mining query: None yet
4) Runestone
Runestone is another airdrop project that has attracted much attention after RSIC, and is led by @LeonidasNFT, a well-known KOL in the Ordinals field. In the past 2 weeks, Leonidas has raised funds from the industry through RSIC also provided a donation of 0.15 BTC.
At the same time, Ruestone’s airdrop rules are relatively transparent, that is, at block height 826, 600, the wallet needs to hold 3 inscriptions, but the inscriptions starting with “text/plain” or “application/json” must be excluded. For example, BRC-20 does not count.
At present, the number of whitelist wallet addresses announced by Runestone has reached 113,376, and the scale of airdrops is unprecedented. Once everything is ready, a formal airdrop should be carried out in the near future.
Check whether it is in the whitelist: via https://runestone.lfg.cash or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FKJd0h6O5X1R0ooNBx2pH47xi3CsCY8xczhI25YROVw/edit#
Magic Eden Collection: None yet
Mining query: None yet
5) The Rune Guardians
Guardians also plays a similar game to RSIC, airdropping to blue-chip NFT holders on Ordinals, and the project party bears all gas costs, but the specific rules have not been announced.
Official Twitter: @RuneGuardians
Official website: http://theruneguardians.com
Magic Eden collection: https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/trg
Mining query: None yet
In addition to the projects mentioned above, I have also participated in several other fee-based projects. For example, RuneDogecoin charges mint in a tiered manner and then airdrops, but lacks specific products and roadmaps; and Genesis Runes uses free as an attraction when promoting it. But in fact, a developer fee of $50 was charged for each piece, and the total amount was over-issued to 33.7K. Later, there were some repurchases + destructions, but the total amount is still as high as 29.9k, and the current price has broken.
5. How to participate in Runes?
Okay, lets get back to Runes themselves.
Casey also noticed that the hype about Runes in the market is already very hot, and many project parties want to grab the first token, so Casey recently decided that he would deploy tokens No. 0-9 himself. The specific names will be disclosed to the community. Collection. Moreover, when Runes was first launched, the length of all token names was from 12 digits and above. Token lengths within 12 digits will be gradually released, allowing projects in need to pay (burn) to have shorter token tickers. . The picture below was posted by Casey in October last year. Now the price of BTC has nearly doubled.
Therefore, after Runes is officially launched, there are several ways to participate in Runes:
1) Directly mint the first 10 tokens No. 0-9 deployed by the Casey team, the names are to be determined. And due to the high attention of Runes and the complete infrastructure ecology of Ordinals, it is estimated that many generation tools will support it immediately, and there should be no need for a local BTC full node. It is estimated that it will cause a gas war for a period of time.
2) Hold NFTs or certificates of the above-mentioned and other pre-mining projects launched in the next 2 months. After the project team deploys the corresponding tokens on Runes, they will directly receive the corresponding airdrop.
6. What is the relationship between Runes, Ordinals and BRC-20?
With Runes going online, we can take another look at the BTC layer protocol landscape.
I used to think that Runes was a parallel protocol to Ordinals, but I recently discovered that this is not the case. Runes and Ordinals share a Github code base, and structurally, Runes and Inscriptions are at the same level. To put it more bluntly, Runes and BRC-20 are token protocols of the same level, and both belong to the Ordinals ecosystem. But from the perspective of the Casey team: BRC-20 is an unofficial token protocol, while Runes is more like an official token protocol.
The competition between Runes and BRC-20 is about to begin, and Runes will attract more people to deploy/hype altcoins in the short term. Of course, BRC-20s ordi is still the first altcoin on Bticoin, which is an undisputed fact.
In addition, I am also concerned about whether Runes, in addition to being a coin issuance protocol, has some undisclosed innovations that exceed the ones mentioned in previous blog posts. I am afraid that I will have to wait until Runes is officially released to see it.
7. Finally
Overall, based on the appeal of Caseys team and the comprehensive infrastructure of Ordinals, Runes has the opportunity to trigger the third wave of BTC ecological craze.
