As the Bitcoin halving is about to happen, the Runes protocol will also be officially launched. Various projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem are ready, and some have already taken off in advance. Some of these projects have announced that they will launch their own project tokens on Runes. The hype around Runes has heated up.
First let’s understand what the Runes Protocol is and why it is important.
Runes was proposed in 2023 by developer Casey Rodarmor, who is also the creator of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol. It is planned to be officially launched at the next Bitcoin halving (about 8 days later).
Runes is a new Bitcoin protocol designed to facilitate the issuance and use of alternative cryptocurrencies using the blockchain's native UTXO transaction model. The Runes protocol is more efficient and easier to use than the BRC-20 token standard. Runes has the potential to build a functional and useful cryptocurrency ecosystem on Bitcoin. The advantages of the Runes protocol may lead to important use cases in the Bitcoin ecosystem in the coming months and beyond.
For more information, please refer to this article on Followin : In-depth discussion of Runes protocol and "public engraving" issuance mechanism
1) Runestone
Runestone is the earliest and largest project on the Runes protocol. Driven by the upcoming launch of the Runes protocol and the expected airdrop, the Runestone floor price has continued to rise in recent days. The current floor price has reached 0.0923 BTC, and the market value has reached 10340 BTC (about 730 million US dollars).
Ordinals developer Leonidas once said that Runestone is not an NFT collectible, but a meme coin. If the Solana ecosystem meme coin can create a market value of $1 billion overnight, imagine how far the meme coin on Bitcoin can go. He also said that Runestone holders will receive three meme coin airdrops, one of which will start airdropping this month and is a "Dog" coin.
2) Pups
$PUPS token is the first real meme coin on Bitcoin. PUPS has risen by more than 45% in the past 24 hours, with a market value of 5540 BTC (about 390 million US dollars). According to Coingecko data, the floor price of Rune Pups NFT reached 0.11 BTC, up 30% in the past 24 hours, setting a new record high.
According to the PUPS team, after the launch of the Runes protocol, the PUPS token will switch from BRC-20 to the Runes protocol. The team believes that the Rune protocol is more decentralized than BRC-20. We will continue to observe whether more BRC-20 tokens will follow suit and migrate to the Rune protocol.
3) Runecoin
RSIC METAPROTOCOL is a collection of 21,000 Ordinals NFTs. RSIC is a variation of the term Bitcoin ASIC miner. Users who own an RSIC miner can use it to start "mining" their upcoming token $RSIC. The RSIC METAPROTOCOL floor price has risen nearly 20% in the past 24 hours and is currently 0.086 BTC.
3) Node Apes
Node Apes @thenodeapes , Chinese name: Node Ape, is another pre-Runes project, inspired by another famous Bitcoin NFT project Node Monkey. Node Ape and rune miner Ordinal jointly promise that runes will be "mined" if they are kept in the same wallet.
4) RuneX
Runessance @RunessanceFi is a lending platform. In addition to being available on Runes, you can also find the platform on PIPE. The project allows you to use UTXO tokens as collateral so that you can borrow BTC. On the other hand, lending your Bitcoin can give you an attractive Bitcoin-native yield. The project is currently in testnet.
6) RunePro
@Rune_Pro is building a marketplace for Rune. They are also still building the testnet. In other words, there is no working product yet. However, keep following their X account and you may be able to get a whitelist position for their testnet. This will also give you points as a reward once the testnet is launched.
Currently, most Runes projects are still under construction, so please pay attention to project risks.
In addition, the infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem has begun to deploy support for the Rune protocol, including the wallet Unisats, the OKX inscription market, the NFT market Magic Eden, the wallet Xverse, etc. The Ordinals lending platform Liquidium is preparing to launch the Runes lending function.
