A New Proposal by the Creator of Bitcoin Ordinals: “Runes”

Casey Rodarmor, the innovator behind the Ordinals protocol, has put forward an alternative to the widely adopted BRC-20 token standard that was introduced earlier this year. While BRC-20 triggered a craze of memecoin trading on the Bitcoin platform and enabled the creation of fungible tokens like PEPE and ORDI through Ordinals on Bitcoin, Rodarmor argues that it has resulted in an overabundance of “junk” unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) that clutter the blockchain.

In a detailed blog post, Rodarmor introduces “Runes” as a UTXO-based protocol designed to align more effectively with Bitcoin by avoiding the generation of unnecessary outputs.

Rodarmor has also acknowledged shortcomings in existing fungible token protocols such as Counterparty, Omni, and Really Good for Bitcoin. Despite the speculative nature of most fungible tokens, he believes that perfecting the protocol could contribute to the advancement and wider adoption of Bitcoin.

During a discussion on The Ordinals Show Twitter Spaces, Rodarmor expressed uncertainty about pursuing the Rune concept. This prompted co-host Trevor Owens to offer a substantial incentive of $100,000 from the Bitcoin Frontier Fund to developers if they successfully create a functional Rune application.