'The new $10 billion protocol': Bitcoin builder explains what is Runes

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Runes are a new narrative within the crypto ecosystem that leverages the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain infrastructure. This new sector reached $346 million in total market cap in less than a week, according to data aggregator RunesMarketCap.

However, as it happens with many new concepts in crypto, many investors aren’t familiar with Runes yet. Bitcoin infrastructure Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BVM) member who identifies himself as Punk 686 explained to Crypto Briefing that Runes is a new fungible token standard for Bitcoin’s ecosystem created by Casey Rodarmor, the developer behind the Ordinals Protocol.

“Those who missed BRC-20 last summer are searching for the next $ORDI. Lots of people I know from the Ethereum and Solana communities who have little to no exposure to Bitcoin also wanted to dig in,” shared 686.

From the builders’ perspective, Runes provides a more straightforward mechanism for creating fungible tokens compared to other methods available on Bitcoin, like BRC-20. This simplification can reduce the technical barrier, encouraging more builders to build on Bitcoin, added 686.

“Runes has been the hottest narrative for months for the BTC ecosystem. Never have we seen so many pre-launch projects for a new protocol, unlike the Oridinals launch when there were zero tools, and zero infrastructure to support the protocol. Remember the spreadsheet days of Ordinals trading? That’s no longer the case for Runes – we have seen Runes projects that have been building for months, communities organized boot camps, and education sessions about Runes.”

All this effort can be seen as people taking seriously the possibility of Runes being the next “$10 billion protocol,” said 686. BVM is one of the entities building infrastructures to receive the Runes protocol, with a dedicated blockchain called RuneChain.

The dedicated blockchain was envisioned to solve fee problems tied to Runes minting and trading. A Dune Analytics dashboard created by user Cryptokoryo shows that 2,137 BTC were paid in Runes-related fees, which is over $136 million at Bitcoin’s current price.

Through RuneChain, the BVM team wants to see a decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem built using the Runes protocol.

“RuneChain features an order book DEX for permissionless Runes trading with a 2-second block time and $0.001 transaction fee. Think of RuneChain as ‘The Decentralized Binance’ for Runes ecosystem.”

Moreover, 686 shared that users can expect more features commonly found in the DeFi ecosystem built with Ethereum infrastructure, such as Rune Staking and Rune Lending.

“Of course, we are just 1 week in, so it’s still too early to say how far will this go. But we are all very excited for the journey ahead for RuneChain as well as the whole Runes ecosystem at large.”

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