The Runes protocol has witnessed a notable downturn in activity, despite its earlier robust performance in generating daily fees amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, over the past twelve days, the protocol has only exceeded the $1 million mark in total fees twice, indicating a significant decline.
The decline in activity on May 10th was particularly noticeable, with fewer new mints and interactions with the protocol compared to previous periods. According to data compiled by Runes Is via a Dune analytics dashboard, the protocol’s fee revenue has experienced a steady decrease. Although Runes continues to accrue substantial daily fees on the Bitcoin blockchain, its total fees surpassing $1 million occurred only on two occasions in the past twelve days, highlighting a downward trend.
Runes, a novel Bitcoin token standard enabling the creation of fungible tokens on the blockchain, was introduced by Casey Rodarmor, the mind behind Ordinals, which facilitated Bitcoin nonfungible tokens.
Since its debut on April 19, coinciding with the latest Bitcoin halving event, the Runes protocol has been operational for three weeks. Its launch sparked investor frenzy, resulting in a surge in transaction fees and record-breaking earnings for Bitcoin miners, with over $135 million generated in fees during the inaugural week alone.
Data from Dune Analytics reveals that until April 24, Runes-related transactions dominated the Bitcoin network. On April 23, Runes accounted for 81.3% of transactions, while Bitcoin transactions dropped to 18.15%, with Ordinals and BRC-20 transactions at 0.1% each.
However, Runes transactions steadily declined over the subsequent nine days until May 2, before beginning to recover from May 3 onwards. By May 4 and 5, Runes had regained a transaction share exceeding 60%.
The mining community welcomed the surge in fees as their earnings had significantly decreased post-Bitcoin halving. Nonetheless, in May, total revenue for Bitcoin miners plummeted to under $30 million per day.
Runes, akin to Ordinals, unlocks novel token standards on Bitcoin’s blockchain, providing a more efficient tokenization solution than BRC20. Consequently, there has been a surge in memecoin trading on Bitcoin, which recently recorded its one billionth transaction.
Despite initial traction challenges faced by many platforms, Runes has already achieved substantial success, with several Rune collections boasting market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to data from Magic Eden.
Furthermore, Casey Rodarmor recently hinted at an innovative audioreactive generative art project during an Ordinals event in Hong Kong, underscoring the platform’s promising potential.
