"Methane" is the hottest term in the Bitcoin ecosystem recently. As the first fairly minted token of the new Bitcoin protocol Alkanes, the market cap of METHANE has already exceeded $6 million, which means each METHANE is worth over $60. The editor consulted some Bitcoin ecosystem players who participated in the minting, and found that the minting costs varied significantly. If we take $5/token as the baseline minting cost, the earnings from minting METHANE have already exceeded 10 times.
How did this new asset protocol Alkanes emerge in the long-cold Bitcoin ecosystem?
Protocol Background
The predecessor of the Alkanes protocol was called Protorunes, or "Programmable Runes", with the same founder. This project briefly attracted attention in the Bitcoin ecosystem last mid-year when Runes was still hot.
The protocol founder @judoflexchop is the Chief Technology Officer of the Bitcoin wallet Oyl Wallet. While this wallet might not have many users in the Bitcoin ecosystem, it has high visibility. Just look at its funding situation:
On March 8, 2024, the Bitcoin infrastructure company Oyl completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round, led by Arca, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom, Domo, UTXO Management, Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Werthheimer, Kanosei, and FlamingoDAO.
Due to Arthur Hayes' involvement, this wallet quickly gained visibility in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Last mid-year, Oyl launched a Bitcoin Non-Fungible Token project called "Airheads", which sparked controversy due to its relatively high minting price. In terms of NFT price performance, it was a "failed" project, but recently it has risen nearly 3 times due to the popularity of the Alkanes protocol.
Although they all make wallets, in the Bitcoin ecosystem, most major wallets are not simply wallet providers. Companies like OKX, UniSat, Magic Eden, and Oyl (the protagonist of this article) have many other Bitcoin ecosystem businesses beyond their wallets, with only Xverse having a more "focused" business scope. Regarding Oyl, besides the wallet, they also created a Bitcoin RPC called "Sandshrew" and the Alkanes protocol.
Now Oyl is fully pushing this protocol, and their Official Twitter name now includes Alkanes:
Reasons for Popularity
Alkanes is a new Bitcoin asset protocol. Overall, it borrows from the "Runestone" structure of the Runes protocol but has stronger extensibility and supports smart contracts. As mentioned earlier, the protocol's predecessor was Protorunes. From the name, Protorunes seems like a "modified Runes", but it's not. Simply put, the Runes protocol and "Runestone" structure are like the closed iOS, while Protorunes and Alkanes are like the open-source Android.
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