Over the recent months, crypto enthusiasts have witnessed the rise of airdrops, and now, Bitcoin is joining the trend. Runestones, an initiative within the Bitcoin Ordinals project spearheaded by the pseudonymous collector and self-professed NFT historian known as LeonidasNFT, is set to distribute more than 112,000 runestones to qualifying wallets.
These airdrops target wallets that hold three or more inscriptions from any of the 2,300 collections within the Ordinals space. In anticipation of the event, Runestone Ordinal inscriptions are already trading on the Solana-based OTC exchange, WhalesMarket, with prices ranging from $665 to $1,995.
Similar to Ethereum’s NFTs, Ordinals Inscriptions enable the recording of non-financial data on the Bitcoin blockchain, including images, text, and videos. Each inscription is linked to an individual satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
The upcoming “fairdrop” precedes the launch of Casey Rodarmor’s new protocol, Runes, slated to debut in eight weeks. Runes offers a UTXO-based alternative to the BRC-20 token standard, aiming to address energy inefficiency concerns associated with the latter.
Rodarmor’s protocol leverages the UTXO system, assigning tokens to specific UTXOs for efficient data inscription on Bitcoin. When Runes launches, each Runestone will transition into a Runes token.
LeonidasNFT emphasizes the simplicity of Runestones, framing them as part of the evolution of blockchain utility. This perspective aligns with Rodarmor’s broader Web3 vision for Bitcoin, where BTC serves as the base currency, Runes as fungible tokens, Rare Sats as semi-fungible tokens, and Inscriptions as NFTs.
The logic for Runestone is simple:
The primary use case for blockchains today (not forever) is number go up.
The most honest form of number go up is non-utility meme coins.
The top blockchain in the world should have the top meme coin in the world.
The top meme coin in the…
— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) February 23, 2024
The Runestone airdrop criteria require addresses to hold a minimum of three inscriptions, excluding certain file types and requiring inscriptions from a specific block onwards. Even overlooked “cursed inscriptions” are eligible, underscoring the inclusivity of the initiative.
Leonidas describes Runestone as a dynamic process, reflecting a commitment to innovation within the Ordinals community and advancing Rodarmor’s vision for Bitcoin’s role in the Web3 landscape.
RUNESTONE UPDATE!
All I will say is that Runestone is a process. If we wanted to do something basic it would have happened a month ago and everyone could have floored to make a little money and life would move on.
But we are in the business of doing something legendary here… pic.twitter.com/K0p4sdeOTV
— JPEGMaxi (@jpegmaxi) February 29, 2024
