Is there any hope for Rune?

Author: c00k1e (@lonelyhorseme)

Ordinals is dead, this is one of the most popular memes of Ordinals. Since the advent of runes, this meme has developed into Runes is dead and the famous "Casey harakiri".

Since its launch, the performance of runes has always been unsatisfactory. At present, the total market value of runes will remain above $1 billion. This is the famous "Casey harakiri line", and we are back to the old place. In the past 5 days, the total trading volume of the rune market has been only a pitiful $2 million or even lower. Due to restrictions on ticker naming, a total of only about 87,500 rune tokens have been "etched (deployed)" since its launch at the end of April.

In comparison, more than 640,000 meme tokens have been deployed on Solana since April 1 this year. Not to mention the trading volume, the top 30 meme tokens in Solana's past 24-hour trading volume can single-handedly challenge the entire Runes.

The summer solstice has passed, but the "Runes Summer" called by foreigners has not yet arrived.

In the eyes of many Chinese degens, Runes is simply a typical "CJB" - isn't it said that foreigners have a consensus? Don't Chinese and foreigners accept each other? Foreigners are just thundering without raining, and they are the first to pull down...

In fact, I think this statement is a cognitive trap. Runes are indeed a consensus among foreigners at the Ordinals FT protocol level, but the Ordinals community itself is very small, and if it is further subdivided into the group of foreign rune players, it is even smaller. In contrast, in last year's inscription craze, almost all players in the Chinese community participated, and the Chinese community has truly experienced it and reached a consensus that the inscription track can make money.

This is actually a one-sided confrontation, with most Chinese degens VS a minority of foreign degens.

Runes cannot take off. On the one hand, there is the reason that the current market has entered a relatively flat or even sluggish stage. On the other hand, the Bitcoin ecosystem, or the Ordinals ecosystem and even the rune ecosystem, is still a small circle in the entire Crypto circle.

The total number of Rune Holders is less than 730,000, and only a little over 480,000 have played Rune. Excluding the situation where one person controls multiple addresses, the actual number of independent players is even more pitiful.

Rune is not short of good and sexy meme tokens. EPIC•EPIC•EPIC•EPIC, which just completed its airdrop, can be called the Bitcoin version of $PEOPLE. Many Ordinals projects, communities and even individuals led by the Blob team raised 33.3 Bitcoins to bid for the fourth "Epic Satoshi" produced in the halving this year. After "etching (deploying)" this rune on it, it was airdropped to more than 90,000 addresses for free.

This story of gathering the power of the ecosystem and giving back to the ecosystem is sexy enough. However, the cognitive threshold also exists objectively. Bitcoin has been regarded as "currency" or "virtual gold" in the past so many years. Since the birth of Ordinals, there have been constant controversies surrounding the Ordinals ecosystem. At the same time, many Crypto players still have the impression of Bitcoin as "currency" - Bitcoin? Oh, yes, it's expensive. If you can't make a fortune by investing in Bitcoin, I won't play it.

The existence of this impression makes the spread of the story that a Bitcoin's smallest unit "Satoshi" was bought by a group of Bitcoin ecosystem believers at a price of 33.3 Bitcoins. It needs to actively break the circle to be heard by more people. Many people first don't know what "rare Satoshi" is. Secondly, they may be confused after hearing this story and can't appreciate the charm of this story.

I must say that no cryptocurrency can have such cultural attributes. We can't see a certain ETH on Ethereum with a value 3.33 billion times greater than itself. What's more, there is no precedent for buying a "rare satoshi" with 33.3 bitcoins before, which means that a group of fanatical explorers of Bitcoin culture are using 33.3 bitcoins to seek an answer - if 33.3 bitcoins equal to 1 satoshi proves the cultural value of Bitcoin, then can these 33.3 bitcoins create greater value?

Previously, the BRC-20 version of $PUPS was bridged to Solana and caused a surge and sensation, which was a very good start. After $PUPS, I observed that the communication between the Solana ecosystem and the Ordinals ecosystem has become much closer. The most direct feeling is that the two NFT series of Bitcoin Puppets and OMB have many buyers from Solana.

Pulling up the market or skyrocketing prices can certainly bring a lot of attention and new users to an ecosystem in the short term, but in order to keep them, the ecosystem must be infectious, have Vibe, and have its own moving stories and even culture. After the birth of Ordinals, Bitcoin has gradually developed from a "value medium" to a "cultural medium". In other words, Bitcoin itself is a kind of culture. It has stood firm for so many years, but has never relied on various application narratives until today, which has proved that it is the currency of our generation and the accumulation of faith of a generation.

What does the growth of Rune require? First of all, I think we need a bridge from Rune to other chains. Such infrastructure is being built by RuneMine, Beyond, and MultiBit. I think the day when we have a Rune Bridge is not far away.

In my opinion, liquidity is secondary. More importantly, we need to bring the stories of Runes and Ordinals ecology to users of other chains, let them see that Bitcoin has excellent native memes and moving native stories, and let everyone update their impression of Bitcoin. Just as young people rarely buy gold but speculate on shoes, game accessories, and NFTs, Bitcoin is also young now.

We need a renaissance for Bitcoin. We need to challenge the public's old impression of Bitcoin and let more people begin to appreciate the cultural diversity of Bitcoin.