What are Bitcoin Runes and what do we need to know about them?

[we-btc]

Bitcoin BRC-20 Runes are being developed and I would like to know more about them.  Can anyone explain them in detail and what changes to the protocol are being proposed?

Do Runes support Bitcoin's purpose to be an "electronic cash system"?

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[Solosanz]

How do Runes work?

Runes work by leveraging the existing Bitcoin infrastructure, specifically the UTXO model. In the UTXO model, transactions are made up of inputs and outputs. When a user spends a Bitcoin, the UTXO representing that Bitcoin is consumed and new UTXOs are created to represent the change.

With Runes, each satoshi within a UTXO can be assigned a unique token identifier, allowing for the creation of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network. When a user wants to transfer a Rune token, they simply create a new transaction that consumes the original UTXO and creates a new one with the updated token identifier.

In short they create a new one shit project that claimed to solve the high fees, but they didn't want to leave Bitcoin network. Actually the best solution to solve high fees when transferring BRC-20 token is to leave Bitcoin network.

Do Runes support Bitcoin's purpose to be an "electronic cash system"?

No, you're not using real Bitcoin, so there's no support or contribution to Bitcoin.

There are many projects that support Bitcoin to be a currency e.g. lightning network, rootstock etc.

[d5000]

Just realized that Runes seems to be very similar to an older, but not very well-known protocol called PeerAssets (it comes originally from an old altcoin called Peercoin but is compatible with Bitcoin and all Bitcoin-based blockchains).

Both use UTXOs to sort of "visualize" the "payment tree" like Bitcoin transactions, so for example the Bitcoin Core RPC commands to list transactions would also show the token transactions, and SPV clients can show them too. And in contrast to the earlier "coloured coins" protocols like EPOBC, the value in satoshis transferred by the UTXOs is not relevant for the transferred value at all. Also the OP_RETURN structure (containing values, decimals etc.) looks quite similar to me although the data format seems different. Both have also the advantage that they don't need any auxiliary token.

The differences between both protocols are subtle:
- Runes seems to have unique names ("symbols"). PeerAssets tokens can have names but they are not unique, so you can't identify tokens by name, only by the TXID of the creation transaction, but the advantage on the other hand is that squatting is not possible at all.
- PeerAssets transactions have an additional output to a private key based on the TXID of its creation transaction called the "Pay to Tag-Hash" output (of value zero if permitted by the blockchain), making it possible to use it without any additional database, but bloating all transactions by ~20 additional bytes. This can be seen as a fee spendable by anyone, and also doesn't lead necessarily to a bloating of the UTXO set.
- PeerAssets tokens can be "minted" afaik only by the token creator.

It has also some similiarities to the Colu protocol from 2015, but Colu uses some offchain methods, like using torrents (hashes being stored on the blockchain) for metadata.

So my impression is that this new protocol doesn't add anything really new to Bitcoin, although it is certainly better than BRC-20 and its successors.

[pinggoki]

Think of them as NFTs OP, they're useless and the make the network congested, that's how it is with runes and inscriptions, they're not really that helpful to the bitcoin ecosystem overall so I'm not too keen on using them. Remember the time when bitcoin was so expensive? That's because the network was full of these runes and inscriptions. If we really want to have a better bitcoin network, maybe supporting lightning network and using that network and they're definitely the most helpful way that you can contribute to the network, not flooding them with these worthless things, it's a good thing that they've gone a little bit since then, no worries of high fees at least for now.

[avikz]

Bitcoin BRC-20 Runes are being developed and I would like to know more about them.  Can anyone explain them in detail and what changes to the protocol are being proposed?

Do Runes support Bitcoin's purpose to be an "electronic cash system"?

Ask AI, Google it and you will get an answer!

However, if you ask my point of view, I would say, Runes or any other BRC-20 token provides you options to create your own coin that runs through Bitcoin network. Scammers all around the world is now exploiting this facility to flood the Bitcoin network with their own shitcoins and NFTs.

Binance marketplace has decided to delist all BRC-20 tokens and NFTs from the next month. Bitcoin Devs as discussing to block this facility as it only floods the network and pushes the transaction fees higher. Not good for any common users of Bitcoin.

[Outhue]

Anything running on the Bitcoin network was made possible to grab attention, oh yes it's running via Bitcoin, it's happening even in the real world where once your business is successful, many will want to take a bit of the success using a new business that delivers nothing new compare to yours.

A relative who has been saying that he has a gem of a project for me mentioned runes and he said it will make him a millionaire in 2025, I just laugh very hard, it's possible though because sometimes those things that aren't making sense makes the most money in crypto but later they will end up in where they belong.

Runes are not necessary, we already have so many NFT projects in the crypto space and they are all craps but running on the Bitcoin network seems like the fool's game, the fool's money will surely come in but the end will be very ugly.  

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

Bitcoin BRC-20 Runes are being developed and I would like to know more about them.  Can anyone explain them in detail and what changes to the protocol are being proposed?

Do Runes support Bitcoin's purpose to be an "electronic cash system"?

For the fact that they also make use of the same network with bitcoin does not make them to be bitcoin or stand in an equal position as bitcoin, just as you have called it, BRC-20 and the name Runes and not bitcoin, we have another good examples of other tokens like that just as we had with the ordinance tokens inscribed with the bitcoin block space which share same network with us and are something entirely different from the bitcoin we already know and have.

[we-btc]

Bitcoin BRC-20 Runes are being developed and I would like to know more about them.  Can anyone explain them in detail and what changes to the protocol are being proposed?

Do Runes support Bitcoin's purpose to be an "electronic cash system"?

Ask AI, Google it and you will get an answer!

However, if you ask my point of view, I would say, Runes or any other BRC-20 token provides you options to create your own coin that runs through Bitcoin network. Scammers all around the world is now exploiting this facility to flood the Bitcoin network with their own shitcoins and NFTs.

Binance marketplace has decided to delist all BRC-20 tokens and NFTs from the next month. Bitcoin Devs as discussing to block this facility as it only floods the network and pushes the transaction fees higher. Not good for any common users of Bitcoin.

Now that I understand a little better, I couldn't agree more.  My question now is why did we allow this garbage onto the network and how can we get it removed?

[franky1]

Now that I understand a little better, I couldn't agree more.  My question now is why did we allow this garbage onto the network and how can we get it removed?

it first become able due to segwit opening up a subclass (sub stack) of new opcodes that had no set format conditions and would just be accepted into blocks no matter what data was included..

some people think the way to stop it is to disable the opcode junk uses but now with taproot having a substack of substack of opcodes there are hundreds of open(trojan) opcodes to choose from.
the actual solution is to disable unconditioned/unset opcodes and then only enable them again when proposals are published wanting to use an opcode and display the format/conditions of utilising the opcodes so that code can be made ready to validate such new functions and when enabled due to network readiness then the opcode with new formats activate, knowing the network is ready to validate the bytes that appear after the opcode, thus able to validate the new features

yes it means devs cant just create new funky things and slide them in unchallenged.. but thats a good thing to have core need the network readiness first, it makes devs need to think about features the network want rather than random crap the network wont care about or validate

[d5000]

My question now is why did we allow this garbage onto the network and how can we get it removed?

It is actually a bit more complex to what franky1 answered (as always ...   )

First, the most obvious fact: You can store arbitrary data on Bitcoin since its very inception. Neither Segwit nor Taproot is needed for tokens. Doginals is a relatively new method to store NFTs and tokens on Bitcoin code from 2014/15 (Dogecoin can be seen technically as a "pre-Segwit Bitcoin").

The problem of many of these old protocols is that they clutter the UTXO set with data which is not necessary for transaction validation. That's why OP_RETURN was introduced in 2014 or 2015. OP_RETURN allows to store data on the chain without having to store it in the UTXO set.

OP_RETURN is also what would be used by Runes principally to store metadata. That is why I wrote it is better than BRC-20 and similar protocols. While BRC-20 does not clutter the UTXO set that much like a protocol in the style of Doginals, the problem of BRC-20 is that you need two transactions to move any token.

The unpopular truth is: While you have a blockchain with transactions structured like Bitcoin, where you can use any data you want for public keys, amounts and sequence data, then you can't prevent the creation of tokens nor NFTs. And OP_RETURN is the best try to make that "node-friendly" - i.e. that they don't have to bother with cluttered UTXO sets due to tokens.

There are ways to make tokens much more expensive to create, but that would need a complete rework of Bitcoin's inner workings. For example, I remember discussions about Grin, where it should be about 50-100 times more expensive to create an "arbitrary data storage solution" (for example, tokens or NFTs) than on BTC (given the same level of network congestion and the same unit value), because there are only few bytes on Grin per transaction you can use to store arbitrary data.