The 840,000th block on the Bitcoin network marked the latest halving and the introduction of the Runes protocol that opened the second memecoin hunting season. Instead of seeing lower revenue, miners encountered record-high growth.

On 20 April, the reward for mining one block was halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, while the network's hashrate hit a record high of 655 EH/s.

In preparation for the event, miners blew the dust off of even low-profitable ASICs. All the hype was due to the expected growth in earnings from processing transactions. Due to limited block capacity, users are forced to pay higher fees to ensure their transaction is processed as quickly as possible. The situation becomes especially acute when there is competition for a specific block.

On 20 April, the average transaction fee skyrocketed to a record-high $128. Miners' commission income for the 840,000th block alone amounted to 37.6 BTC or $2.4 million, and the ratio of the reward for mining a block exceeded 10 to 1. In total, the commission on this day amounted to $78 million. For comparison, Ethereum only saw $3 million in commission.

The excitement was once again associated with meme coins. The Runes protocol, which was designed to replace BRC-20, launched on the same 840,000th block. BRC-20 (which is analogous to ERC-20 in Ethereum) are coins minted within the network and transmitted through the Satoshi numbering.

The problem with BRC-20 is the large increase in UTXO (unspent transaction output), which is why the creator of the Ordinals protocol, Casey Rodarmore, called them spam. He also developed the Runes protocol, which doesn't feature this shortcoming. The key differences between the two approaches are presented here:

Since the matter deals with memecoins that don't carry a payload, one key attribute is the starting block. This explains the high competition and $2.4 million paid in commission. However, interest in minting remains. As of 22 April, 6,843 Runes tokens have already been issued. They see 435,000 transactions made with them every day, which is 69% of the total.

The second phase of token mania had no impact on Bitcoin's value and position.

Interest in Runes will probably fade closer to May, which is what previously happened with Ordinals and BRC-20. In that scenario, commissions would decrease. Miners will have to adapt to a reduction in their overall income.

StormGain Analytical Group 
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