With the completion of the fourth Bitcoin halving, the Runes token protocol is officially launched. However, the names of the runes are different from other tokens and often present unusual formats. This article will introduce the design principles behind the names of the runes tokens. The article is sourced from the author Jason Nelson, translated and organized by Jinse Finance, and written by PANews.
(Summary:
Bitcoin rune transaction volume dropped by 99% at its peak, and transaction fees are below $3. Has the market cooled down?)
(Context:
Character length, incomprehensibility, and skyrocketing fees. What happened after the launch of the Runes token protocol?)
Table of Contents:
Why use such long names?
Runes names cannot contain numbers
Debate over naming
With the completion of the Bitcoin halving and this milestone, the new RunesToken protocol is officially launched on the Bitcoin network. According to data from Luminex, the launch platform for Ordinals and Runes, since its launch on April 20, the Runes protocol has established over 8,000 etchings (the preferred term for RunesToken deployment) on the Bitcoin blockchain.
In these new digital assets, a trend has quickly emerged, which is the use of long and unusual format names. Browsing this emerging category on platforms like Magic Eden, one can see tokens with labels such as “SYMPATHETIC・PARAMUTUALISM” and “WANKO・MANKO・RUNES.”
The names of Runes are usually displayed in all uppercase letters, which may seem strange but the creators have good reasons for it. The Runes protocol has a built-in minimum name length to prevent what is known as name squatting. Name squatting, domain squatting, or network squatting involves registering a name that is typically recognized as a brand or trademark by others in order to profit from its recognized value.
However, the creators of Runes do not see this as a problem.
Why use such long names?
Brian Laughlan, co-founder of OrdinalsBot, said:
However, this limitation did not stop someone from creating a rune named THE・NEW・YORK・TIMES, even though it has no apparent connection to The New York Times.
According to the Ordinal Theory Handbook, the names of runes must be between 1 and 28 characters. Although the current length limitation only allows the use of letters from A to Z, the names must be unique regardless of spaces. This means that names like UNCOMMON・GOODS and UNCOMMONGOODS are considered the same. Additionally, even with different spacing, runes cannot use the same letter sequence as existing runes.
In an episode of the Hell Money Podcast, Casey Rodarmor, the developer of Bitcoin Ordinal, explained:
Runes names cannot contain numbers
He explained:
Rodarmor gave an example:
Debate over naming
Rodarmor recalled:
In this setting, Rodarmor explained:
When asked about using popular names and brands as rune names, Rodarmor didn’t mind.
He said:
He further pointed out:
The file also explains:
The Runes protocol was announced by Rodarmor in September and is seen as an approach to blockchain interoperable tokens ranked at the top of the market. He noted that Runes aims to address several issues brought about by the BRC-20 Token standard last year, such as wasted block space.
Although some non-professional observers may consider Runes and BRC-20 Tokens to be the same, Ken Liao, CEO of the Bitcoin wallet Xverse, said that over time, the differences between them will become more apparent.
Liao told Decrypt:
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