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Bitcoin runes impacting revenue plummets for miners
The Bitcoin network has seen a dramatic 99% drop in daily rune carvings, with just 157 runes recorded on Monday, down from a peak of 14,700 in late April, according to Dune analysis data.
This decline in rune carving, a fungible token protocol, has significantly reduced transaction fee revenue for Bitcoin miners.
A record 23,061 runes were engraved on April 26, but the recent decline saw engraving transaction fees drop to just $3,835 on Monday.
After its introduction on April 20, the Runes protocol initially boosted miners’ earnings by generating large transaction fees, making up for revenue losses after Bitcoin’s fourth halving event.
The halving, which coincided with the launch of Runes, reduced the block subsidy to 3,125 BTC, but the increase in Runes transaction volume helped maintain miners’ revenue.
To date, over 91,200 runes have been engraved on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Despite the recent recession, Rune transactions have dominated the activity of the Bitcoin network.
The protocol, pioneered by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor, aims to create fungible tokens using block space more efficiently than BRC-20s and aligns with Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) model.
Some core Bitcoin developers have criticized the Runes protocol, suggesting that it takes advantage of vulnerabilities in the Bitcoin network.