RUNES Aims to be the “Las Vegas” of the Bitcoin Network, but BRC 20 Doesn’t Want to Be the “Atlantic City”
When it comes to well-known casinos around the world, many people’s first reaction is “Las Vegas” or “Macau.” However, “Atlantic City,” located in the southeast of New Jersey, the first gambling city in the United States, has long been forgotten, even though it once made a net profit of $3 billion a year.
During the Ordinals Asia event at the Hong Kong Bitcoin Week two weeks ago, Casey Rodarmor, the founder of Ordinals and RUNES protocol, openly and frankly stated in his speech, “If Ordinals and RUNES are a more transparent, decentralized, and lower-house-edge casino than Las Vegas, where all Degens can have fun, I think that’s great.”
RUNES ecosystem has been online for over a month, and its market value has not only reached Casey’s initial target of $1 billion, but its ecosystem assets have also seen a new round of overall growth in the past few days.
On May 29th, DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON saw a 38.83% increase in a 24-hour period, reaching a new all-time high; RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE increased by 14.15% in 24 hours; PUPS•WORLD•PEACE saw a 31% increase in a 24-hour period; and CATS•IN•THE•SATS saw a 56% increase in a 24-hour period.
While the entire RUNES ecosystem is experiencing growth, many community members are reminded of the first MEME casino in the Bitcoin ecosystem, BRC 20, and wonder if it has declined as well.
How big is the threat of RUNES to BRC 20?
Even before RUNES was officially launched, many community members seemed to have sensed the competition between RUNES and BRC 20. People often joked that Ordinals is an “endless argument” ecosystem, and the upcoming launch of “RUNES” also means that this clash of ideas will turn into a real war, a war between a new casino and an old casino.
For gamblers, the biggest difference and advantage of RUNES compared to BRC 20 lies in the better trading experience of the casino. BRC 20 requires two transactions, inscription and transfer, to complete a transfer, while RUNES eliminates the inscription step and only requires one transaction.
“BRC 20’s selling process requires me to inscribe a transfer inscription first, wait for the confirmation on the chain, and then transfer the transfer inscription. It requires two gas fees and two waiting times, which are both high in terms of time and monetary costs. It also leads to a lot of 546 sats being occupied in the wallet, and this garbage will always exist.” – Bitcoin ecosystem observer and player 0x Sea explained to BlockBeats.
This means that BRC 20 leaves more transaction records on the blockchain, increasing costs and network burden with each transfer. In contrast, the transaction fees of RUNES are significantly lower and more efficient.
From a cost perspective, the RUNES protocol can reduce the total cost of minting transactions by up to 60%. 0x Sea commented on this in an interview, “RUNES has indeed improved some of the issues with BRC 20. For example, when dealing with small UTXO inflation, BRC 20 requires additional inscribe operations, while RUNES does not require them as it is based on the UTXO mechanism. Although BRC 20 has also made improvements in this aspect, RUNES performs more prominently in the deployment of new currencies.”
This is also Casey’s long-standing dissatisfaction with BRC 20, which generates a large number of “garbage” UTXOs. This is the reason why Casey proposed the concept of “RUNES”. RUNES is native to the Bitcoin Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model, minimizing the generation of “garbage” UTXOs and achieving more responsible UTXO management and a smaller blockchain footprint.
“I really don’t like this about BRC 20. It takes so many gas fees for transactions. When gas fees are high, the cost of minting, listing, and selling is really high,” said an anonymous community member in a conversation with BlockBeats. “Because of this, I basically have to double or triple the selling price to break even. If the token doesn’t have good support and continued development behind it, minting will result in a loss.”
The trading experience of RUNE is smoother and more seamless. The anonymous community member bluntly stated, “In comparison, BRC 20’s multiple transactions and complex steps are cumbersome and time-consuming. Sometimes I even feel that this has a lot to do with Domo’s personality or way of doing things. He is really slow in pushing forward with BRC 20. Unlike Casey, who directly merges code that people submit on GitHub if he thinks it’s okay.”
However, some community members believe that Domo’s cautious and steady approach is also reasonable. “To some extent, it ensures the security and stability of the system, and it is acceptable to be slower.”
Struggling Small Assets in BRC 20
Some netizens have passed through “Atlantic City” and mentioned that they can’t see any signs of prosperity in the city. There are very few pedestrians on the streets, let alone luxury cars. It’s like a “ghost town.” Although BRC 20 is not an “empty city” like “Atlantic City,” there are rumors in the industry that “RUNES will eventually kill BRC 20.”
“For top BRC 20 tokens like Ordi and Sats, there won’t be much impact, but for small and medium-sized BRC 20 tokens, RUNES will definitely have a significant impact on them,” 0x Sea told BlockBeats.
0x Sea further explained, “The threat of RUNES to BRC 20 can be seen from multiple perspectives. For BRC 20, tokens like Ordi have already been listed on major exchanges such as OKX and Binance, and their liquidity is primarily concentrated on centralized exchanges (CEX), so they will not be greatly affected by RUNES. However, for newly issued tokens on BRC 20, I believe there will be a significant impact, especially for those with market values of only a few million dollars.”
This is also confirmed by the data. As of the time of writing, Ordi has increased from around $36 to $49, a 36% increase, and Sats has also increased by 14% this week.
Looking at the trading volume, the Ordi /usdt trading pair on Binance had a trading volume of $208 million in the past 24 hours, and the Sats /usdt trading pair had a trading volume of $97.97 million. However, on-chain trading volume was only $130,000 and $38,000, respectively. It is clear that Ordi and Sats have more trading volume on centralized exchanges.
According to Geniidata, as of May 31, only six BRC 20 tokens had a trading volume of over $100,000 in the past 24 hours, including wzrd, core, 派, Piin, Ordi, and PUPS. On the other hand, according to Geniidata on May 31, 17 tokens on RUNES had a 24-hour trading volume of over $100,000.
“If you planned to launch a new token on BRC 20 or if the project wants to issue a new token, in the current situation, everyone may choose RUNES. Because RUNES has gained more on-chain infrastructure support in a short period of time, such as wallet and minting platform support. In the short term, the exposure and traffic of RUNES far exceed that of BRC 20,” 0x Sea told BlockBeats.
During the conversation with BlockBeats, the Shell Finance team, a Bitcoin ecosystem lending protocol, revealed that they would use the NFT Fair Launch on the Ordinals protocol to complete the core construction of the community, as well as the cold start of the product and liquidity. Regarding the view that “BRC 20 will be completely replaced by RUNES,” the Shell Finance team believes that this view is only partially correct. “This view is correct in part, as RUNES assets do have an impact on BRC 20, but the main impact is on MEME coins in BRC 20.”
BRC 20’s Defense Against Not Becoming “Atlantic City”
During the heyday of “Atlantic City” when the gambling industry was booming, theaters, cinemas, music halls, dance halls, and gift shops serving the gambling industry also opened and developed rapidly. As a famous seaside tourist destination and spa city, Atlantic City also had a world-famous boardwalk along the coast, which transformed it into a tourism city with travel as its main business after the decline of the gambling industry.
Now, in the face of the direct impact of RUNES and the squeeze from various other Bitcoin FT protocols, BRC 20’s “casino” business is undergoing “industrial upgrades and migration” as a defense strategy.
At the time just before the launch of RUNES, the latest update of BRC 20 not only supports 5-character tickers but also introduces a “self-minting” mechanism, allowing project teams to deploy and issue tokens themselves and supporting burning mechanisms.
These updates have brought BRC 20 to a certain extent of industrial upgrade, not only facilitating the centralized issuance of project teams but also stimulating market performance through deflationary gameplay. Whether it was intentional or not by founder Domo, it means that the two will face fierce competition.
After the activation of the 5-character ticker at block height 837,090, the first batch of enthusiasts who scrambled to deploy 5-character tokens even raised gas costs to thousands of dollars. Some observant users noticed that one enthusiastic user inscribed in their wallet address, “I collect these tickers with the aim of donating them for free to interesting and hardworking individuals or teams building in the Ordinals ecosystem.”
Currently, Pizza, an ongoing airdrop by Unisat, is one of the 5-character ticker tokens that were snapped up at that time and was gifted to Unisat by the community.
The Shell Finance team stated, “After upgrading to a 5-character ticker, it means that BRC 20 has begun to shift from a MEME coin factory to DeFi system-level infrastructure and applications. RUNES mainly affects the assets and traffic of four-character MEME coins in BRC 20, and I agree with this because the impact is indeed significant. However, for the Bifi scene on Bitcoin, it is the ultimate battle of asset protocol wars. Whoever can attract more developers to build new applications based on asset protocols will have the last laugh. Currently, BRC 20 has begun to get involved, and AVM is being pushed forward, while Runes has not started yet.”
“BRC 20 must give its own answer in this crucial year to survive as the old casino faces the siege of the new casino,” Shell Finance said.
Acknowledgments: Interviewees 0x Sea, Shell Finance
