On April 23, the Bitcoin network achieved a new record with the highest number of confirmed daily transactions, just three days after entering a new halving cycle that started on April 20.
This surge brought the total to over 1.6 million unique transactions processed between various senders and receivers.
Data comparisons from sources such as Blockchain.com and Glassnode have linked the spike in transactions to the launch of Bitcoin Runes.
This new offering serves as an alternative to the existing Bitcoin Ordinals and the BRC-20 protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain, capturing a significant portion of the daily transaction volume.
Notably, Runes accounted for 81.3% of all Bitcoin transactions on the day of the record.
Despite this initial dominance by Runes, Bitcoin (BTC) transactions regained their majority status over the network by April 29, with BTC transactions making up 77.8% of the total, while Runes transactions had decreased to 18.8%.
The remainder of the transaction volume was made up of ordinals at 1.2% and BRC-20 transactions at 2.3%.
The influx of Bitcoin Runes transactions has proven beneficial for the mining sector. Major U.S. mining firms such as Stronghold Digital Mining and Marathon have reported positive impacts from the Runes transactions, both financially and functionally, as communicated to Cointelegraph.
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Since the halving, Rune transactions have contributed over 1,200 BTC in transaction fees to miners.
Although the excitement surrounding Bitcoin Runes seems to be waning, Ignas, a pseudonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher, sees continued potential in this market.
In a post dated April 17 on platform X, Ignas commented, “Runestone, RSIC, and PUPS are already pumping, promising holders shiny new Rune token airdrops.
And FOMO threads keep coming. But, like the NFT frenzy post-JPEG reveal, the market could soon cool off.”
Runes and BRC-20 tokens represent new fungible token standards designed to expand Bitcoin’s utility within the emerging sector of Bitcoin DeFi, or BTCFi.
This initiative marks a significant shift towards integrating more complex financial functions directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, illustrating a growing trend of innovation within the cryptocurrency landscape.
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