While Bitcoin takes up the lion’s share of its blockchain network most days, a clear winner has emerged from the bandwidth war between the Bitcoin standards — Ordinals, BRC-20 and Runes.

Onchain activity is a good indicator of real-time market demand and overall community interest. Since its launch on April 20, Runes, a standard for creating fungible tokens on Bitcoin ( BTC ), has dethroned the long-standing Ordinals and BRC-20 standards in terms of transaction share.

Bitcoin Runes outperforms BRC-20 in onchain activity image 0 Share of transactions of different Bitcoin standards. Source: Dune Analytics

Carpooling the Bitcoin network

In 2024, the BRC-20 token standard took up more than 50% of the Bitcoin blockchain bandwidth for seven days. In contrast, Rune accomplished the same feat in just 10 days, within three months of its launch.

Runes’ latest takeover of the Bitcoin blockchain was recorded on two consecutive days — June 10 and 11 — when the standard took up 51% and 53% of the network bandwidth, respectively. This indicates an active interest among investors for the ecosystem.

However, BRC-20’s transaction share went above 50% on March 30 and has since struggled to keep up with BTC and its new standards.

Check out this Cointelegraph guide to learn more about Bitcoin Runes and how they differ from BRC-20 tokens.

Impact on Bitcoin mining

The increase in network activity helps Bitcoin miners maintain monthly revenues. Since its launch, Runes have generated nearly 2,500 BTC, approximately $170 million in market value.

Bitcoin Runes outperforms BRC-20 in onchain activity image 1 Runes daily transactions distribution. Source: Dune Analytics

Most transactions in Runes are attributed to minting. To date, Runes generated 1,377 BTC in fees for mining, 61 BTC for etching and 1,011 BTC for edicts.

Related: Runes and BRC-20s are just a stepping stone for Bitcoin DeFi

On April 23, the Bitcoin network processed over 1.6 million unique transactions between sender and receivers. In the process, it recorded the highest number of confirmed payments.

Bitcoin Runes outperforms BRC-20 in onchain activity image 2 The total number of confirmed payments per day. Source: Blockchain.com

The launch of Bitcoin Runes played an important role in the spike in the total number of transactions over the Bitcoin network.

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