Bitcoin will be halved in half every four years. imminent Now, it’s likely that the halving will take place on Friday morning or Saturday early. The 15-year old blockchain is expected to be harmed immediately after the Runes Protocol launch by Casey Rodarmor.
Rodarmor released its big project last year, the Ordinals protocol to create NFT-like “inscriptions”, on Bitcoin. It brought new vigor and playfulness into the blockchain ecosystem that is notoriously conservative. Crypto miners also received a total of $256 million. The popularity of these transactions led to a number of problems, including network congestion and high user fees.
Ordinals’ success could be built on by the Runes Protocol, which allows users to create a plethora of tokens on top of Bitcoin, similar to those seen in other blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana. The arrival of Rodarmor’s new platform may also be a fundamental shift in what is considered acceptable within the Bitcoin community, as any other digital tokens than bitcoin are regarded taboo.
Ordinals allows you to attach data pieces known as “inscriptions”, to the smallest BTC denomination, allowing non-fungible (NFT) tokens to be created and traded, a feature that previously was only possible on other blockchains. Domo unveiled the “BRC-20”, a standard that allows for the creation of tradable tokens or fungible tokens. This was another new feature on Bitcoin.
Rodarmor has himself described Runes in an article as being a faster and more efficient way to create new tokens on top of Bitcoin. In a Post on X, April 1, The protocol is “built to support degens, memecoins”
Rodarmor stated in February, on a podcast episode. Hell Money.
It is not clear if they’ll take off like the Ordinals.
Simple and Secure: Runes
Rodarmor describes Runes a protocol standard and token that could address BRC-20’s shortcomings.
BRC-20 allows users to transfer only one token type at a time. Runes will, on the other hand, allow the user to transfer different tokens at once.
Rodarmor claims that Runes offers greater security and simplicity to the users than BRC-20.
The way that inscriptions are implemented requires three transactions to transfer a BRC-20. In an interview, Rodarmor explained that you need to perform two transcriptions in order to generate the inscriptions. Then one more is required to send the resultant inscription.
The other problem is the complexity. BRC-20 is basically a superset Ordinals Inscriptions. If you are writing an index for BRC-20, you will need to add both the Ordinals Index and the logic of the BRC-20.
Rodarmor explained that Runes is an independent protocol, which does not depend on Ordinals.
The system is designed to make it more efficient. Everything else, with the exception of a rune creation, is done in a single transaction.
He added, “The transfers are efficient and transactions are small.”
Runes doesn’t need to be launched at the exact same time. Halfing.
Rodarmor described it as “thematically awesome”.
Runes may influence some post-halving trend, but he doesn’t deny that there will be others.
This halving, the fourth of its kind in 15 years and a key feature of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original software, will reduce miners’ rewards for adding blocks to Bitcoin by half from 6,25 BTC down to 3,125 BTC.
Bitcoin’s security is directly related to its difficulty, which can be measured by the number of hashes required to create a block. If the block rewards are reduced by half, or for any other reason, then the hash rate will fall. This would make the network less secure because it is easier to create new blocks.
Rodarmor stated that the halving program is an aggressive schedule. “I would never advocate changing the decay rate, but I wouldn’t have chosen it if I were designing Bitcoin from scratch.”
The network may be more dependent on the transaction fees, which are the tiny amounts of bitcoin that miners pay to include a transaction in the most recent block.
In order to offset the halving in block rewards, BTC would need to increase its price. This will encourage more mining and therefore an increased hash rate. If this does not occur, then fees will need to be increased instead.
Rodarmor stated that “we already see many blocks where the charge is higher than the subsidy for the block, and this will continue to increase with every halving.”
The runes can therefore be used to generate demand for blocks, which could lead to higher fees.
Bitcoiners are not all of the same opinion. Ordinals proved controversial among some developers If Runes is successful, it may also be accused of causing network congestion and increasing fees.
What is the Runes system?
Runes is a version of Ordinals that uses UTXOs – unspent outputs from transactions, a core element in Satoshi’s design for the Bitcoin network – to create its transactions. UTXO refers to the amount of cryptocurrency left after a payment, like the change you get after making a cash purchase.
This new protocol allows for a balance to be held in any number Runes Tokens. One Rune may contain up to 10 Runes A, 100 Runes B, 1,000 Rune C and so forth. Any UTXOs not used by a particular transaction are destroyed.
The user would then send a lot of Runes to different inputs. These Runes will be converted to OP_RETURN and burned. The only way to make it non-spendable is by marking the input with a “Runestone,” a pointer that indicates an alternate output. Bitcoin Core’s software will ignore them if they do not mark their inputs. The Runestone can be used for “etching” or to mint new Runes or transfer Runes.
Rodarmor describes Runes in a 2,000-line code presentation as a simple OP_RETURN protocol.
Dan Held, a Bitcoin entrepreneur, says that the concept of not creating UTXOs leftover is “a simple and strict improvement to BRC-20.” In a post on the blog earlier in this month.
He wrote: “Inscriptions doubled in size the UTXO collection just last year, and most of them are useless forever.”