While Bitcoin takes up the lion’s share of its blockchain network on most days, a clear winner has emerged from the bandwidth war between the Bitcoin standards — Ordinals, BRC-20 and Runes.
Onchain activity is a good indicator of real-time market demand and overall community interest. Since its launch on April 20, Runes, a standard for creating fungible tokens on Bitcoin (BTC), has dethroned the long-standing Ordinals and BRC-20 standards in terms of transaction share.
Carpooling the Bitcoin network
In 2024, the BRC-20 token standard took up over 50% of the Bitcoin blockchain bandwidth for seven days. In contrast, Runes accomplished the same feat in just 10 days within three months of its launch.
Runes’ latest takeover of the Bitcoin blockchain was recorded on two consecutive days — June 10 and 11 — when the standard took up 51% and 53% of the network bandwidth, respectively. This indicates an active interest among investors in the ecosystem.
However, on March 30, BRC-20’s transaction share went above 50%, and it has since struggled to keep up with BTC and its new standards.
Check out this Cointelegraph guide to learn more about Bitcoin Runes and how it differs from BRC-20 tokens.
Impact on Bitcoin mining
The increase in network activity helps Bitcoin miners maintain monthly revenues. Since its launch, Runes has generated nearly 2,500 BTC, approximately $170 million in market value.
Most transactions in Runes are attributed to minting. To date, Runes generated 1,377 BTC in mining fees, 61 BTC for etching and 1,011 BTC for edicts.
Related: Runes and BRC-20s are just a stepping stone for Bitcoin DeFi
On April 23, the Bitcoin network processed over 1.6 million unique transactions between sender and receivers. In the process, it recorded the highest number of confirmed payments.
The launch of Bitcoin Runes played an important role in the spike in the total number of transactions over the Bitcoin network.
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