Runes protocol triggers the Bitcoin network jam

The much-anticipated Bitcoin halving was launched on April 20, attracting much attention and praise from the crypto market.

However, the attention was shared for the first time with the Runes protocol, which caused controversy by flooding the network with high fees and meme coins.

Runes aggravate the congestion of the Bitcoin network

Runes has sparked a frenzy in the crypto community, presenting itself as a way to inject meme coins into the Bitcoin blockchain. This protocol differs from the BRC-20 token standard by using the Uncompensated Transaction Output (UTXO) model. It allows the creation of altcoins directly on the network through the “etching” process.

Casey Rodermore, the protocol's creator, explained that Runes was designed for cryptocurrencies and memcoins, emphasizing its simplicity, efficiency and security.

“It's a legitimate competitor to Taproot Assets and RGB. The protocol is self-contained and has no dependencies on frameworks or scripts, which makes it extremely simple… I'm very skeptical about “hard” tokens, but Runes is undoubtedly a “hard” token protocol.” added Rodermore.

The introduction of Runes led to increased activity on the Bitcoin network, resulting in congestion and higher fees. In fact, the minimum transaction fee is now more than 840 sat/vB, which is roughly $76. It also boosted block income, with an average of 21.74 BTC per block post-halving day.

James Loup, the founder of Kasa, pointed out that these high payouts allowed Bitcoin miners to surpass the highest daily transaction payout of $24 million. Miners collected 860.20 BTC, roughly $54 million in transaction fees alone, in the first 60 blocks of the post-halving period.

Read more: Half a story of Bitcoin: Everything you need to know

Proponents of Runes see this increase in network activity as it increases miners' rewards, which have been halved.

“In the last 5 BTC blocks, payouts have exceeded Coinbase rewards! Runes degens have single-handedly compensated for the fall from halving mining rewards. Runes is significantly increasing Bitcoin's security budget,” Leonides explained.