The next quadrennial halving of Bitcoin is almost here; it is currently predicted to occur on Friday or early Saturday. However, a lot of the 15-year-old blockchain’s users and developers are focusing on something that is anticipated to happen just after the halving: the release of Casey Rodarmor’s Runes protocol.
The major project release from Rodarmor last year, the Ordinals protocol for producing NFT-like “inscriptions” on Bitcoin, infused the ecosystem of the infamously conservative blockchain with a new spirit of playfulness and development vigor while rewarding cryptocurrency miners with a whopping $256 million in revenue.
The Runes protocol has the potential to build on the success of Ordinals by enabling users to spin up massive amounts of tokens on top of Bitcoin that resemble those frequently found on other blockchains such as Ethereum and Evena. The introduction of Rodarmor’s new platform, however, may potentially significantly alter the parameters of what has hitherto been accepted in the Bitcoin community, where any digital token other than the original cryptocurrency bitcoin has long been seen as forbidden.
NFTs could be created and sold on Bitcoin thanks to ordinals, which made it possible to affix data fragments known as “inscriptions” to satoshis, the smallest unit of currency. Shortly after, “BRC-20,” a standard for producing tradable, or fungible, tokens—another feature absent from the original Bitcoin—was introduced by another developer, Domo.
“Simplicity and Security” by Runes
Runes is a token standard and protocol that can help with some of BRC-20’s drawbacks, according to Rodarmor.
Only one kind of token may be transferred with one inscription to one location using BRC-20. On the other hand, Runes will let users transport any number of Runes from the inputs to the outputs in a single transaction by spreading out various tokens.
As compared to the existing BRC-20 standard, Rodarmor claims that Runes will provide consumers with more security and convenience. Rodarmor contrasted Runes with Ordinals, saying that Runes is an independent protocol.
Runes and the Halving of Bitcoin
From a technical standpoint, Runes doesn’t really need to launch at the beginning. Nonetheless, he contends that Runes will have an impact on certain post-halving traditions. The incentive for miners that add new blocks to Bitcoin will be halved by 50%, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, according to the announcement of the fourth halving in it’s 15-year history.
How hard the network is to navigate, or how many hashes are required to add a new block, determines how secure Bitcoin is. If, for any of a number of possible reasons, the hash rate drops and it becomes simpler to add new blocks, the network’s security would be compromised.
