Rune Caster: IPO, investment, or trying new things, which one are you?

I recently talked to Myra Wang on the phone about my views on Rune Casting users.

When doing user analysis, I think the most important step is to segment and profile users. For Rune Casting users, I tend to divide them into three types: new hunters, rune investors, and newbies.

The following describes the casting behavior characteristics and tool usage focus of these three groups of people.

| New Hunters

1. Rune Casting Behavior 

Number of Castings: > 1000 

Casting Targets: The runes cast by "new hunters" basically cover most of the potential targets. Through monitoring tools such as https://t.me/ybot_runes, they can learn about the deployment and casting of almost all popular runes at the first time. Whether it is an emerging local dog or a rune blue chip, these addresses always have the highest casting volume.

2. Concerns about the use of tools

Use cost:

When choosing a casting tool, "new hunters" pay the most attention to the use cost. Due to the large number of castings, the accumulated service fees will become a considerable expense. In addition, participating in new castings is very risky, and most targets do not have very high profit margins. Therefore, users who cast in large quantities are basically accompanied by the "brick arbitrage" behavior of high-frequency pending orders - that is, after low-cost new castings, they immediately place orders to sell them at low profits. If the cost of using the tool is too high, this "brick arbitrage" model cannot be maintained.

In addition to the apparent "service fee", the cost of using the tool is also affected by factors such as the way the casting order is generated, the use logic of UTXO, and the flexibility of gas settings.

Operation efficiency:

The second point that "new hunters" pay attention to is operation efficiency. Because many new rune targets have appeared, the time for participation is very urgent: some targets are small in number and will be completed within a few blocks; some targets, if you miss a block, you will face a significant increase in gas in the next block, which will lead to higher casting costs and no profitability. In addition to one-click operation and no need for secondary signatures from wallets, another aspect of operation efficiency is the broadcast speed of BTC transactions.

In addition, this type of user does not particularly care about the interactive usability of the tool, because the operation is extremely frequent, so the new operation has long become muscle memory.

| Rune Investors

1. Rune Casting Behavior 

Casting Times: ≥ 10 times, < 1000 times

Casting Targets: The casting targets of "Rune Investors" are concentrated in some blue-chip projects with relatively high consensus, such as: #0 UNCOMMON, COOK•THE•MEMPOOL, which was very popular at the time. There are many participants in this type of target, and there have been active transactions in the market.

2. Tool Usage Focus

"Rune Investors" are relatively insensitive to tool service fees. Since the minting is mainly based on blue-chip targets, you can look at your assets from a longer-term perspective. Even if the current mint cost is higher than the market price, it may still be profitable in the long run.

The requirements for operational efficiency are not high. Blue-chip projects with high consensus give users ample time to participate in minting. Users do not need to rush to complete operations within a few blocks.

The requirements for tool usability are high. Since this type of users do not participate in new listings so frequently, they are not proficient in operation. If the tools are simpler and easier to use, they can get started faster and reduce learning costs.

| Newbies

1. Rune casting behavior

Number of castings: < 10 times

Casting target: Since they participate with a trial mentality, the targets chosen by "Newbies" may be relatively random. Of course, the target that is most likely to be tried is also No. 0, because any rune player will recommend you: you should practice with No. 0 first.

2. Focus on tool use

"Newbies" are most concerned about asset security. Because they don't know enough about the underlying logic of Bitcoin, they are worried about whether their operations will cause asset losses, whether they will pay more money than they should, and whether their wallets will be stolen? Therefore, to attract such users, reducing their concerns about use may be the first priority.

The second may be the friendliness of the interactive experience and the ease of use of the product. Because they are not proficient in the operation on the chain, they do not understand many basic concepts of Bitcoin transactions, such as: the number of castings of a single UTXO, the rune occupancy, etc. It is very important to express the important information related to casting in the simplest and most understandable way on the interface (of course, this is not easy).

Okay, the above is my understanding of rune casting users. There are so many rune casting tools for users to choose from: Ybot.io, Luminex, MCT, NFTSniper, GeniiData, DotSwap, Ord.io, SatoSea, how to build your own product barriers? Finding the core users should be the first question that needs to be deeply thought about. Only with a deep understanding of core users can we make differentiated products.

Note: I have not been deeply involved in any rune casting project, so I cannot get the actual casting data. The above behavior description is just an observation and summary. And user portrait is a typological analysis method that expresses the typical characteristics of a certain type of user, but it does not mean that a specific user you come into contact with will definitely meet all the above characteristics.