<\/p>\n
The Runes protocol drove a recent uptick in Bitcoin’s on-chain transaction volume.<\/p>\n
The Bitcoin network processed its billionth on-chain transaction more than 15 years after launching.<\/p>\n
The transaction was contained\u00a0in\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0842,241st block and was mined at 5:34\u202fpm Sunday, Eastern Time (ET) on May 5, according to Clark\u00a0Moody’s Bitcoin<\/a>\u00a0dashboard.\u00a0At the time of writing, the Bitcoin network had logged 1,000,323,746 transactions\u00a0in total.<\/p>\n The milestone follows a recent uptick in transaction volume since\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s fourth halving<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Runes<\/a>, a protocol for creating Bitcoin-based fungible tokens,\u00a0both\u00a0went live on April 20.\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0highest daily transaction count was recorded on April 23 with 926,000, coinciding with\u00a0peak activity<\/a>\u00a0surrounding the Runes protocol.<\/p>\n For comparison, February 6 marked the slowest day for\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0on-chain activity in\u00a02024\u00a0thus, with the network processing 278,093 transactions in 24 hours. On May 5, the daily transaction count was\u00a0625,998<\/a>, according to Ycharts.<\/p>\n Data from\u00a0Dune<\/a>\u00a0shows that Rune has driven more than 5.5 million transactions since launching on April 20 \u2014 equating to 0.55% of\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0total transaction count over the course of 0.285% of\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0entire lifespan.<\/p>\n However, Bitcoin was not the first blockchain to surpass the 1 billion transaction threshold.<\/p>\n Ethereum, the\u00a0world\u2019s\u00a0second-largest cryptocurrency\u00a0Ethereum\u00a0surpassed<\/a>\u00a01 billion transactions in the first week of February 2021 \u2014 roughly five and a half years after its mainnet launch in July 2015, according to data from Blockchair.\u00a0At the time of writing, Ethereum had processed\u00a02.36<\/a>\u00a0billion transactions\u00a0in total, according to Etherscan.<\/p>\n The mysterious creator of Bitcoin, pseudonymously known as Satoshi Nakamoto, conducted the\u00a0very\u00a0first transaction on the network on January 12, 2009, when he\u00a0transferred<\/a> 10\u00a0bitcoins to Hal Finney, a computer scientist and cryptographer.<\/p>\n Finney worked closely with Satoshi and other pioneering Bitcoin cypherpunks in the\u00a0network\u2019s\u00a0early days, with Finney operating a node and working to identify bugs in its code. Finney tragically succumbed to Lou\u00a0Gehrig’s\u00a0disease in 2014.<\/p>\n However, many prominent figures within the blockchain community have since argued that Finney is among the most likely candidates to have been Satoshi Nakamoto, with Finney having created<\/a>\u00a0the Reusable Proof of Work consensus mechanism that inspired\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s\u00a0Proof of Work system. Finney\u2019s\u00a0declining health also could explain\u00a0Satoshi\u2019s\u00a0decision to vanish after\u00a0posting<\/a>\u00a0on the BitcoinTalk forum for the last time on December 12, 2010.<\/p>\nBitcoin\u2019s\u00a0origins<\/h2>\n