Interview: DUDU (PukeCastCN), Jasmine (Runes 中文社区)
Translation: Jaleel, BlockBeats
Editor’s Note: As a programmer and Bitcoin developer, Casey Rodarmor (@rodarmor) created the Ordinals protocol and the Runes protocol in a span of two years. Through the development of the Ordinals protocol, Casey provided a new way to store and transmit non-currency data (such as digital artwork) directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. It can be said that without Casey, there would be no Bitcoin ecosystem.
Casey speaking at the Ordinals Asia Summit in Hong Kong
Before the launch of Runes, Casey jokingly said that if the Runes ecosystem didn’t reach a market value of 1 billion USD within a month of its launch, he would prepare to perform seppuku. Although the target was briefly achieved in the middle, the market value did not meet the standard after a month. How did Casey respond to this joke? Two weeks ago, the Bitcoin ecosystem conference in Hong Kong was very lively. How did Casey feel about being in Hong Kong? Jasmine, one of the creators of the Runes Chinese community, and DUDU from PukeCastCN had a chat with Casey in a Space session yesterday. BlockBeats has compiled the interview as follows, with some parts deleted.
DUDU: The Bitcoin Week in Hong Kong two weeks ago was very lively. What are your thoughts on that? I heard that many people got sick from partying too hard.
Casey: Yes, I took a week and a half to recover, but I’m fine now. The Bitcoin market in Hong Kong is really crazy. Western and Eastern players are very different. Chinese people really love gambling and have a great passion for Runes and meme coins. I think this is much better than many Western meme coin enthusiasts who pretend to be pursuing some future of finance and even talk about African bankization. The market here is more pure and honest, and everyone is talking about how to make a lot of money.
DUDU: The Rune protocol has been launched for a month now. How do you feel about the first month? Are there any surprises or things you want to mention?
Casey: There were no surprises, which is lucky. My main concern was bugs in the protocol. If there was a protocol-level bug that messed up the balance of Runes or affected minting or transfers, it would be bad. But so far, everything has gone smoothly, and there have been no protocol-level bugs. There was a small bug in ord (a reference implementation of Runes), which was unfortunate, but it wasn’t a big problem, and I’m glad it was fixed in time.
I think it can be expected that there will be a lot of disappointment when Runes is first launched because it is being hyped up so much, and everyone is saying things like “this stuff is going to the moon”. But that’s not the reality. When a technology is first launched, it’s in its worst state. The ecosystem support is poor, the tools are incomplete, and the trading platforms are not fully developed. I think it’s natural to have some disappointment.
I don’t know how the price and popularity of Runes will be, I don’t make predictions. My only investment that makes money is Bitcoin, and as an investor, my wisdom is very limited. I really don’t know what will happen. It’s pleasant to hear that those who have integrated Runes tell me that it’s much easier than integrating BRC-20, and that makes sense. The protocol is simpler, especially when you’re doing anything with BRC-20, making an inscription and possibly transferring it. Transferring a BRC-20 requires three transactions, which is quite a lot. But transferring Runes only requires one transaction.
I believe that the technical advantages of Runes in simplicity and efficiency have already been demonstrated. It has always been simple and efficient, and those who have integrated Runes also say so, which is great. I don’t know what the market for Runes will be like in the future, that’s hard to say. On Ethereum, there are decentralized exchanges where people can do various transactions on-chain, such as trading Runes or BRC-20 tokens. Bitcoin doesn’t have these. Solana has zero-second transaction time, Bitcoin doesn’t. I think the market position of Runes in the future remains to be seen. For me, the first month has been great, everything is going according to plan.
Source: Ordinals summit 2023
Jasmine: You have always emphasized that Runes is for memecoins, and it’s not about technology, but more about socializing, gambling, and entertainment, to get more people from other ecosystems to pay attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem and eventually use Bitcoin. Runes has indeed attracted a lot of attention and participation from people in other ecosystems. As of now, there are over 70,000 Rune tokens, basically all memecoins. So, where do you think the next breakthrough in the Runes ecosystem might happen? What should builders focus on? For example, building applications that make intergalactic casinos more interesting? Or something else?
Casey: As for future protocol development, there aren’t actually many plans. There are some small things. For example, there is a possibility of allowing people to create Runes where the creator of the Rune is the only one who can mint it. This is part of future protocol development. Protocol development is very tricky. Especially, for example, people want something similar to a decentralized exchange (dex) like Uniswap on Bitcoin, but the problem is that if you design the protocol improperly, you may introduce something called Miner Extractable Value (MEV). With something like Uniswap, miners or validators on Ethereum can insert their own transactions and reorder transactions to make money from user transactions. For example, if you send a buy transaction, a miner can buy before you to ensure that you are buying from the miner. This is not just a problem of miners sacrificing user interests to make money, it also leads to miner centralization because miners have to invest in this very complex infrastructure to be competitive. This means that miners can no longer just plug in hardware and start mining, they have to do a lot of other work, which leads to miner centralization. And the core value proposition of Bitcoin is decentralization. I want to improve the protocol, but in any case, I will not add anything that would lead to centralization of Bitcoin miners, that’s very tricky.
For those building on Runes, my advice is that you have to make things interesting. If you don’t have decentralized exchanges like Ethereum or instant transaction confirmations in one second like Solana, you can only focus on making things interesting, and that’s a high requirement. It’s difficult. You have to make your interface interesting. You have to make your community interesting. You have to make any mechanisms you introduce interesting.
But I think what people should really focus on is fun, thinking about how to build the best possible casino. Runes was built for meme coins and garbage coins, but it’s a good protocol. There’s nothing at the protocol level that prevents people from doing “serious things” with it. I’m very skeptical of what can be done seriously, a lot of protocols are just scams, they don’t do what they claim to do, so don’t do that. But if there is enough interest, like having a stablecoin on Runes that is backed one-to-one with the US dollar or another currency, I wouldn’t be surprised, let’s pray for the development of L2.
99% of layer 2 protocols are garbage?
DUDU: Do you have faith in Bitcoin’s layer 2 solutions? Why?
Casey: I don’t know if I would say I have faith in layer 2. The problem is, to my knowledge, no one has developed a truly effective layer 2 yet. Many people have ideas. Even if they have a beautiful whitepaper, you have to approach it with skepticism. In the past 10 years, thousands of whitepapers have been released, but 99.999% of them are garbage, complete garbage. You have to wait until someone builds something that actually works, and then you can see the characteristics of the system when it’s in existence.
For example, if you look at the Lightning Network, the Lightning Network is great. I like the Lightning Network, but it has some practical drawbacks and operational difficulties. It’s hard to keep channels open, and there are various complex attacks to worry about. We haven’t seen widespread adoption of Lightning Network mobile wallets yet, wallets that can pair with anyone and open channels with anyone. Currently, Lightning Network wallets that work on mobile are ones that open channels with specific Lightning service providers. If you just read the whitepaper of the Lightning Network, it’s hard to predict all these different difficulties.
My attitude towards layer 2 is “seeing is believing”. So rather than saying I have faith, I’m more in a wait-and-see mode. I personally rely on L2 developers. When people create L2 on Bitcoin, they can add anything they want on L2, and if they’re careful, they won’t introduce MEV or centralization at the base layer. That’s what I’m hoping for, and I’m counting on the development of L2. If L2 has these transaction or other features, people can transfer Runes to L2, do any operations on L2, and then settle back to the main chain, that’s the future feature I hope for.
Jasmine: You mentioned in a tweet before that you would rather invest in projects of centralized services than certain Layer 2 solutions. I want to ask you about your view on decentralization. Is decentralization really that important in all these ecosystems?
Casey: First of all, decentralization is the best, and then there are centralized services that can fulfill their promises. If decentralization is not possible, then it’s acceptable if centralized services can function properly. In the market competition, good services will survive and bad services will be eliminated. Even in the competition among centralized services, it’s the same. The worst case is those projects that claim to be decentralized but are actually either centralized or simply don’t work. My comments were actually aimed at decentralized projects that are fundamentally unworkable or just an excuse to issue tokens and then dump them on people. So I prefer to invest in genuinely effective decentralized projects, but I see a lot of them todayInvestments are flowing into decentralized projects that are unlikely to succeed. When choosing between an inevitably unsuccessful decentralized project and a centralized service that provides useful services, I would prefer people to invest in a centralized service that can actually deliver on its promises. For example, in the United States, the best centralized service platform for buying Bitcoin may be River. It is a simple Bitcoin financial service platform where you can buy Bitcoin, transfer funds, and more. I believe it would be great if every country had one or two companies like River that provide a secure and simple way for people to access Bitcoin. I would rather see this scenario than a bunch of L2s that will never work. So, it’s not about the comparison between centralization and decentralization, but rather about the comparison between centralization and pseudo-decentralization. In this case, I would always choose a functional centralized alternative. I would love to see some excellent centralized exchanges that focus solely on Bitcoin or Runes and list every Rune. I think that would be very interesting and fill a gap in the ecosystem.
DUDU: BRC-20 has added new features to new tokens. For example, new tokens can be increased or decreased. But there is no such feature in Runes. Stablecoins are a very important feature in Bitcoin. For example, Ethereum or Solana have this feature. But Runes doesn’t have this feature. What do you think about stablecoins in Runes? Are there any stablecoin projects in Runes that you are aware of?
Casey: Of course, I would categorize stablecoins into three types.
Firstly, I do not endorse stablecoins that try to be supported by project utility tokens. It’s a bad idea, and these schemes always collapse. Terra’s Luna is one such algorithmic stablecoin. Currently, I seem to have come across a similar project called DUCAT, which I do not endorse. I have read their whitepaper, and it is very complicated. I do not believe that everything they are doing will work. We’ll see.
The second type of stablecoin is creating a synthetic coin. Essentially, the simplest stablecoin is when you buy dollars. For example, or you get dollars. You have this token, and people can buy tokens from you at a price of $1 per token, or they can exchange tokens for $1 per token. If you give them a token, you will send $1 to their bank account. This is the simplest and safest stablecoin. Tether and USDC are examples of this type of stablecoin. I haven’t heard of anyone trying to build such stablecoins on Runes. These types of projects are usually very complicated. You need banking relationships, and so on.
Then there is another type of stablecoin, where you try to create a synthetic stablecoin through a transaction between two parties. You have people deposit Bitcoin into your bank account, and then you go long Bitcoin, so the price of Bitcoin goes up. You sell put options or call options on Bitcoin. If the price of Bitcoin goes up, you make money. And then you also go short on Bitcoin, so if the price of Bitcoin goes down, you also make money. It’s a bit like delta-neutral hedging. Your value stays at the same amount in dollars, regardless of whether the price goes up or down.
I have heard of a few projects trying to build stablecoins based on this model. It’s not as crazy as fully synthetic stablecoins that try to create value out of nothing. I don’t think either of them has reached a practical state yet, and they haven’t made it public. They just say, “Oh hey, we’re looking into this” in private.
DUDU: You have mentioned OP_CAT multiple times. Can you explain in detail why you are optimistic about OP_CAT?
Casey: I like OP_CAT. OP_CAT seems to be a very powerful opcode that adds many missing functionalities to Bitcoin. Overall, as long as the opcodes are reasonable and not crazy, I’m willing to accept them. Personally, I would love to see OP_CAT. I would also love to see OP_CTV, which is a covenant opcode. And even crazier things like great script recovery would be cool.
I’m not a researcher, and I don’t have in-depth insights. This is just my off-the-cuff opinion. I think it’s too early to say what will ultimately happen. I like OP_CAT, but some people talk about OP_CAT as if it’s something that will definitely happen. Some people on Twitter say anonymously, “Whether you like it or not, OP_CAT will happen.” I think the reality is that it’s actually very uncertain until people actually try to activate something, which hasn’t happened yet.
BlockBeats note: OP_CAT is a potential opcode that could help Bitcoin achieve smart contract functionalities. For more information, see “13 Lines of Code Help Bitcoin Achieve Smart Contracts? Understanding OP_CAT Soft Fork.”
“Have Fun, Buy Bitcoin”
DUDU: Can you share more information about the Fun Collection? You often post about it on your social media. Do you have any further plans for when it will be released?
Casey: Fun is a collection of photographs taken by my friend Parker Day, and we have been collaborating on it. She started this project two years ago. While she was shooting and doing all the actual work, I was researching ordinals and what later became Runes. We didn’t know exactly how we would sell them, but it turned out that by the time they were finished, ordinals and Runes had become popular enough, so it made sense to actually put them on Bitcoin as Runes. So, it’s a collection of 1,000 photographs shot on film. No Photoshop, just makeup and hairstyling, no special effects.
Fun Collection
Actually, I just finished engraving all the Runes today, and it took a long time. I had to write a program to wait for low fees to do the engravings. So, I finally got all 1,000 engraved. That’s a lot of quantity. I think the total size is around 100 megabytes. So, it’s 25 full blocks of engravings. Yes, there are currently no specific plans for release. We will sell them in some way, but I’m not sure how yet. But I’m very happy with this collection. I think it could be the most expensive art collection because it’s all shot on film with models and makeup artists. It’s probably also the most expensive engraving collection. 97 megabytes of data is no joke. So, it’s a good collection. I don’t know if I would recommend others to buy it. I don’t give investment advice, but the art is really good. So, I’m happy that it’s on the chain.
While this kind of art may not be everyone’s cup of tea, this is Parker’s style, and she launched a series called “Icons” in 2017, which was her breakthrough work and has a similar style. I think it fits very well with NFTs because profile picture collections (PFP) are popular. I think it’s the closest to a PFP. What things like Board Ape Yacht Club or Crypto Punks would look like in real life. They are colorful and very strange. I think it wouldn’t be worth doing if it wasn’t weird. I don’t want to do another collection of 10,000 images made up of pixels. It’s not worth it if it’s not weird. It’s not interesting. I would encourage people to start browsing through these images. There are some weird details. Some may not suit their taste. There are some sexy girls in there. Those are not the ones that are so weird. And there are a few pictures of cats. Take a closer look and see if there’s something you like.
Jasmine: You previously joked that “If the Rune protocol doesn’t reach a $1 billion market cap within a month, I’ll commit seppuku.” Do you have anything to say about this joke? Or do you want to set another goal today?
Casey: Absolutely not, I’m done making price predictions. Given the previous goal, we didn’t achieve it. I remember on May 20th, our market cap was $999 million. It did exceed $1 billion within the previous month. But the rule is what the price is after a month. After a month, the total market cap of Runes was not $1 billion, so you’re now talking to Casey’s “soul.”
Runes Market Cap Data, Source: GeniiData
DUDU: Lastly, please share any thoughts you have on the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Casey: It’s great to be here with a group of degens in Hong Kong. As for the final thing I want to say, it’s “Have fun, buy Bitcoin.” Runes and Ordinals are interesting speculative forms, but there’s nothing that truly compares to Bitcoin. It is the hardest money we have ever had.
If you look at the history of fiat currencies, their lifespan is at most 100 years. They all eventually die, get devalued, and fall apart. We can see that even the seemingly powerful dollar is experiencing inflation at an increasing rate. So, I would say buy Bitcoin and just play around with a small portion of your savings on Runes and Ordinals gambling. But whatever else you do, do not buy venture-backed coins, there’s no reason to buy pre-mined coins. Creating coins doesn’t require any cost, especially with Runes, you can just click a mouse to create one.
I don’t tolerate venture-backed coins, play gambling with a small portion of your funds. But for the rest, buy Bitcoin. Like I said, it’s the only investment I’ve made money on. I still have a lot of confidence in it. We have about 10 times the growth potential until Bitcoin reaches the market cap of gold. I think it could happen. Bitcoin is much better than gold, and you can send it to the other side of the Earth in 10 minutes.
So, that’s the final thing I want to say, “Have fun, buy Bitcoin.”
Original article link: [https://www.blockbeats.com/news/9247](https://www.blockbeats.com/news/9247)
