Registration of ordinals and runes increased, in some cases, between 60% and 80% in 24 hours.
Ordinals adds data on the network using Segwit’s witness, while Runes does use op_return.
This May 12, commissions for transactions in the Bitcoin Network (BTC) have experienced an increase in recent hours, a phenomenon promoted again by the use of ordinal and runes protocols.
According to data Extracted from Mempool.space block explorer, processing recent blocks has reached significant costs: Block 896,422, found 29 minutes ago by the antpool mining pool, recorded 4,701 transactions with an average rate of 52 SAT/VB, which is equivalent to around 14 dollars. That same block, in addition, gave Antpool 0.559 BTC in total for commissions, more than $ 57,000 at that time.
As for current rates for Bitcoin transactions, according to that same explorer, they range between 2 SAT/VB ($ 0.29) for those without priority, while low priority operations average 33 SAT/VB (4.76 dollars), average 34 SAT/VB ($ 5.7) and for those of high priority 45 SAT/VB, reflecting an increase in the demand in the demand for block The network.
The increase in the use of these protocols, which could generate high commissions, is not an isolated event. In 2023, Bitcoin faced a similar situation when the rise of Ordinals and Runes brought the transaction rates at levels between 30 and 40 dollars.
Ordinals is a protocol that allows register data directly in Bitcoinsuch as images or texts, assigning them a unique identifier within the Satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin). For its part, Runes, as well as Ordinals, facilitates the creation of fungible tokens in Bitcoin.
Both protocols, created by Casey Rodamor, make intensive use of space in the blocks, which have a limited size, which generates competition for that space and, consequently, an increase in commissions that users must pay so that their transactions are processed quickly.
Ordinals and Runes, again to the load?
According to it published By the team behind Ordinals, the use of registration of this protocol increased in almost percentages of almost 30%, 40% and 60%as seen in the following image:
On the other hand, in the case of the Runes protocol, which registered ups to the 80% In the last 24 hours, from the X Ordinals account they had reported their increase last May 9.
An intense debate in the center of the Bitcoiner scene
The phenomenon occurs in a moment of intense debate within the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the center of the discussion is the elimination of the limit of 80 bytes in the transactions used by OP_RETURN, a technical mechanism included in the Core client that allows additional data in a transaction.
Ordinals does not use op_return directly (since it is based on secwit witness). On the other hand, Runes, as the cryptopedia explains, does use OP_RETURN to store information from transactions related to fungible tokens. That is, the main runes (instructions on tokens) are coded within op_return, but control of the status of tokens (their property, quantity, etc.) depends on the expense of normal utxes, not of op_return. Op_return serves as metadato or instructions, not as »custody» real of assets.
For example, in block 896,423 mined by Antpool, one of those who paid one of the largest commissions recently (0.552 BTC or almost 57,000 dollars), included 5 OP_RETURN operations through Antpool:
Some developers and users advocate eliminating that top, while others warn that doing could encourage even more intensive use of the network for purposes other than payments, moving away from Bitcoin’s original purpose as an electronic money system.
The concrete in terms of the discussion about op_returno is that, as cryptootics notified, The final response to that strong debate will be More decentralizationas long as those dissidents of the proposal can operate other softwares for their nodes, such as Bitcoin Knots, among others.
