Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0transaction fees have returned to normal after a brief parabolic spike triggered by the launch of Runes, the hyped protocol enabling the creation of Bitcon-based tokens.<\/p>\n
Data from Dune analytics shows that\u00a0Runes\u2019\u00a0daily transaction count tanked\u00a097.5%<\/a>\u00a0to 19,000 from an all-time high of 753,584 on April 23. The pull-back coincides with\u00a0Runes\u2019\u00a0share of\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0on-chain activity dropping to 30% from 81.3% over the same period.<\/p>\n However, the sharp decline in Runes activity has provided a respite for ordinary Bitcoin users.<\/p>\n Average transaction fees on the network have pulled back by 97% to $3.60 since posting an\u00a0all-time high<\/a>\u00a0of $128 on April 20 coinciding with the launch of Runes, according to\u00a0BitInfoCharts<\/a>. The record high marked a 4,375%\u00a0increase in fees\u00a0from $2.86 two weeks prior.<\/p>\n Ryan Song, head at CoinWestern Ventures, a Bitcoin mining consultancy firm, told The Defiant that\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0Rune-induced congestion\u00a0was the result of\u00a0an initial flurry of token minting driven by rampant Runes speculation.<\/p>\n “The Bitcoin network was experiencing a heavy increase in load, which can\u00a0be largely attributed\u00a0to minting,\u201d\u00a0Song said.\u00a0\u201cA wave of minting operations ensued due to heightened speculation around Runes, placing unnatural demands on the already limited Bitcoin block space.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 29, Glassnode reported that\u00a053%<\/a>\u00a0of the $117 million in fee revenue collected by Runes\u00a0was accrued\u00a0on its first day. On April 28, daily fee revenue had crashed to just $1.03 million, down 98% since the\u00a0protocol\u2019s\u00a0debut.<\/p>\n Runes<\/a>\u00a0went live on April 20, the same day as\u00a0Bitcoin’s\u00a0fourth halving event, leading\u00a0to a bottleneck in network activity that spiked transactions as users raced to deploy tokens using the protocol.<\/p>\n Runes leverages Ordinals inscriptions<\/a> in a bid\u00a0to overcome the efficiencies associated with the\u00a0BRC-20 protocol<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 which allowed users to create fungible tokens on Bitcoin for the first time when it launched in March 2023. While BRC-20 tokens quickly exploded in popularity, the protocol\u00a0garnered criticism<\/a>\u00a0for being data-intensive, driving mempool congestion, and pushing up transaction fees on Bitcoin.<\/p>\n Despite the sharp decline in Runes activity, the protocol appears to have secured a healthy dominance over Bitcoin token activity\u00a0\u2014 which accounted\u00a0for nearly one-quarter of\u00a0Bitcoin transactions on May 3.<\/p>\n Runes\u00a0made up\u00a081% of Bitcoin token transactions, followed by BRC-20 tokens with 12%,\u00a0and Ordinals with 5.65%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Runes\u2019 on-chain activity and Bitcoin transaction fees dropped more than 97% in two weeks. Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0transaction fees have returned to normal after a brief parabolic spike triggered by the launch of Runes, the hyped protocol enabling the creation of Bitcon-based tokens. Data from Dune analytics shows that\u00a0Runes\u2019\u00a0daily transaction count tanked\u00a097.5%\u00a0to 19,000 from an all-time high of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[274,273,272,244,266,271,268,270,269,267],"class_list":["post-295078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-de-fi","tag-crypto-finance","tag-decentralized-finance","tag-liquidity","tag-metamask","tag-pancake","tag-slippage","tag-sushiswap","tag-tronlink","tag-trust-wallet","tag-uniswap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295081,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295078\/revisions\/295081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"the-defiant\"](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F74d0620f204d27afc76fdb4f5066eba2dcb05cca-1919x542.png&w=828&q=100\")
Bitcoin tokens<\/h2>\n