Original article written by: Rebbeca Ren

Original source: Metaverse Special Forces

Three days later, at around 4 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday, April 20, 2024, Bitcoin will be halved for the fourth time in its history.

What attracted the most attention and participation in this Bitcoin halving was the launch of the Runes Protocol mainnet and the launch of the first rune token. As a Bitcoin builder, investor, enthusiast, or Fomo, do you deploy a full node yourself or rely on a platform to do it for you?

As the fourth Bitcoin halving approaches, the industry’s attention has begun to focus on the “Runes Protocol” that was launched simultaneously. This homogeneous token protocol developed by Casey Rodarmor, the founder of Ordinals Protocol, aims to provide a more responsible token issuance method that saves more space on the Bitcoin chain than BRC-20.

In the recent Twitter timeline, you may have seen many KOLs release technical guides to teach everyone how to "deploy full nodes" in preparation for the arrival of the Rune Protocol.

So why do we need to deploy nodes? This is about the creation and issuance mechanism of Rune tokens.

“Etch” is the first step in creating a Rune Token, a process that involves setting the basic characteristics and management rules of the Rune Token, such as divisibility and minting conditions.

During the etching process, the project owner can choose whether to conduct a "pre-mine", that is, to pre-allocate a portion of the tokens to the founder or initiator of the project before the Rune tokens are publicly circulated. This is mainly done to provide project start-up funds, reward developers, or reserve tokens for community activities and other specific distributions.

After etching is complete, the “Mint” phase begins, which is the process of generating new tokens. Minting can be public or closed, depending on the conditions set during the etching phase:

• Open Minting: Anyone who meets the preset conditions can create new tokens, which ensures that community members can actively participate in the development of the Rune ecosystem.

• Closed Minting: New tokens can only be minted after certain pre-set conditions are met (such as reaching a certain amount or a certain time has passed). Once these conditions are no longer met, the minting process will stop, thus limiting the total supply of tokens.

In order to prevent the first rune from being snatched away or pre-mined by VC or project parties, Casey decided to hard-code the first 10 runes (Rune 0 - Rune 9) into the rune protocol and only support public casting so that everyone can participate publicly.

Among them, the rune number 0 named UNCOMMON•GOODS will be automatically minted when Bitcoin is halved, with a block height of 840,000, allowing anyone to mint at any time in the next four years. Since this is the first token under the Rune Protocol, expectations are high, and everyone wants to participate in the public minting as soon as possible, but this will also cause traffic overload and crash of the "token minting" platform or minting tool on the day of launch, so building a full node is the safest way.

So how to build a full node?

Run your own Bitcoin Core and avoid relying on third-party services. Download the Bitcoin Core software for your operating system from bitcoin.org and install it on an SSD hard drive.

Install the Ord and Runes clients.

With Bitcoin Core, Ord, and the Runes client set up, you can start practicing etching and casting runes from the command line on the testnet.

For more detailed information, such as detailed tutorials on installing and running a full node, you can refer to @ohxiyu and @web3 annie’s tweets, or you can search for relevant content on your own.

If you are worried about the difficulty of installing a full node, there is an easier way to participate - use a proxy platform. Here are some tips:

① Prepare multiple wallets: Since different proxy platforms may support different types of wallets, it is recommended to prepare several commonly used wallets, such as Unisat Wallet, OKX Wallet, Xverse Wallet, etc. In this way, you can switch to different platforms at any time as needed.

② Reasonable management of UTXO: Split the UTXO in each wallet and increase the number of UTXO. If the number of UTXO in the wallet is too small, even if the amount is large, the number of transactions that can be initiated in parallel is very limited.

But the amount of a single UTXO cannot be too low. For example, when a single UTXO is around a dozen or dozens of dollars, the wallet will piece together the UTXO for payment, which will increase your network fee cost. Especially considering that the Gas Fee will soar after the Bitcoin halving, it is not recommended to use too many fragmented UTXOs to make up an order.

It is recommended that each address maintain at least 3 UTXOs, and the amount of each UTXO should not be less than $500 to optimize transaction costs and efficiency. (Source: @lilyanna_btc)

The following are the platforms that currently support Rune proxy:

• OKX Web3

• Unisat Wallet

• Luminex https://luminex.io/

• GeniiDatahttps://geniidata.com/ordinals/inscribe/text?ref=M9LTHP

• UniCrosshttps://unicross.xyz/index

• Rune Alpha https://runealpha.xyz/etch