Original author: Cookie
Yesterday, the Ordinals protocol v.017.0 was officially released, including the final implementation plan of the long-awaited Rune protocol.
The editor has quickly compiled a few QA about runes for you:
Can I play runes now?Not yet, Rune will be officially activated at Bitcoin block height 840,000, which is expected to take about 19 days.
What will be the first rune?The first rune is UNCOMMON GOODS that is hard-coded (that is, written directly in the code) by Casey Rodarmor, the founder of the Ordinals protocol. We can start from the Bitcoin block height of 840,000 to create this rune. World Rune. However, it must be noted that the Creation Rune is limited in time and will be played from the upcoming halving block in 2024 to the next halving block, with one rune for each transaction. Casey is still considering whether to implement the previous plan of hard-coding numbers 0-9, that is, all the first 10 runes.
If Rune is deployed the same as BRC-20, will everyone play fairly?Depends on deployer settings. It not only supports the deployment at the same time, which facilitates centralized distribution by the project side, but also supports everyone’s fair casting after deployment like BRC-20. At this point, Rune is much more flexible than BRC-20. It also supports public casting but is reserved by the project side (such Rune Token will be marked), as well as the aforementioned limited time and unlimited quantity.
Why is the first officially unlocked rune ticker ZZZZZZZZZZZZ?The maximum length of the rune ticker is 26 characters (Caseys hard-coded UNCOMMON·GOODS has nothing to do with this rule. It is also worth noting that • as a separator is not included in the 12 characters. This is to make the ticker more There is recognition, such as WO•YAO•DIS•YOU), but it is a reverse unlocking process over time (blocks), gradually unlocking from long tickers to short tickers. To put it simply, after Rune is officially activated at block height 840, 000, all 13-26 character tickers can be deployed immediately, but ZZZZZZZZZZZZ is the first 12-character ticker that can be deployed. The 12-character tickers will be fully unlocked in blocks 840,000 - 857,500, that is, after every 17,500 blocks, shorter 1-character tickers will begin to be gradually unlocked. So for familiar 4-character tickers, like $PEPE, we have to wait about 3 years.
Compared with the BRC-20, this ticker unlocking method is completely reverse. BRC-20 has just opened a 5-character ticker. If BRC-20 continues to open longer ticker deployments in the next few years, will the two collide at some point in time? This is quite interesting.
In the recent update of BRC-20, it not only supports 5-character tickers, but also supports self-release, that is, the project team deploys it by itself, and also supports the burning mechanism. In the short term, these updates of BRC-20 are more conducive to generating hype than Runes. They not only facilitate the centralized issuance of project parties, but also allow old project parties to develop some deflationary gameplay to stimulate market performance. This is BRC-20 Current Advantages.
The advantage of Runes is that first of all, it is a standard at the Ordinals protocol level. An inappropriate analogy is ERC 404 and DN 404 on Ethereum. The former is the creator of the recent graphic and currency integration craze, while the latter is It is a cheaper protocol that fully complies with the Ethereum standards and works towards officially becoming an EIP. As the official son of Ordinals, Runes will not suffer from the stability problems caused by changes in the Ordinals protocol like BRC-20, and can fully enjoy the possible improvements brought to it by the new features of the Ordinals protocol for the first time. At the same time, it is also based on UTXO, players do not need to engrave the transfer inscription first and then send the transfer inscription to complete the transaction, which greatly saves costs.
More importantly, although Runes is a standard at the Ordinals protocol level, its implementation itself does not depend on the Ordinals protocol. It is independent like Taproot Assets and RGB. The implementation of BRC-20 relies on the Ordinals protocol. In the long run, the development of BRC-20 will appear passive.
In past articles, the editor has mentioned Caseys dissatisfaction with BRC-20 - the large number of junk UTXOs produced. Therefore, in September 2023, Casey released the idea of Rune, an unspent transaction output (UTXO) model native to Bitcoin, which minimizes the generation of junk UTXO, thereby achieving a more responsible UTXO governance and a smaller on-chain footprint.
Now, the rune is coming. Everyone often jokes that Ordinals is an ecosystem that “quarrels all the time”, and the imminent launch of “Runes” also means that this conflict of ideas will turn into a real war, and the competition between Runes and BRC-20 will begin. .
